


Save For The Snogging

by doodleishere



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell, Simon Snow & Related Fandoms
Genre: ........in the epilogue, Agatha and Simon still get together fifth year, Agatha is a friendly person with more friends than Simon and Penny in fifth year because I say so, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, But we are ignoring this, Dating, Enemies to Fake Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual HEA, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Fake Dating, Fake/Pretend Relationship, First Kiss, I promise it will end happy, Jealousy, Like i know she specifically says that she doesn't really have other friends except them, M/M, Magic still exists, New Spells, Oblivious, Pining, So There's That :), Watford Fifth Year, also uh no boater hats in this fic, although it wasn’t my initial plan, but it's because of a fake dating scheme, canon divergence because no boater hats, ebb has a GIRLFRIEND and her name is SUNNY and y'all just have to deal with it, i refuse to describe simon in a hat, in this house we hate the mage, my wife ebb is in this though, please please please be aware that this fic WILL get angsty, so don't be surprised if there's some mage slander in here, some light pagatha i think??, the more i write agatha the more i want her to be happy outside of Penny and Simon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:01:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 33,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27122882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doodleishere/pseuds/doodleishere
Summary: In which Simon Snow asks Baz Pitch to fake date him in fifth year in order to make Agatha Wellbelove jealous enough to ask him out. And it goes about as well as you'd think.Or: Simon Snow and the Consequences of His Actions.
Relationships: Simon Snow & Agatha Wellbelove, Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch & Simon Snow, Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Comments: 68
Kudos: 125





	1. I'm All Yours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StarOrgana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarOrgana/gifts).



> hi so i really wanted to write more snowbaz and my friend suggested a fake dating fic and uh......this happened. very teenagery pining on baz's part. big insecure oblivious energy on simon's. this will have multiple chapters, much to my dismay. hope you enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Simon has a horrible idea.

**BAZ**

Simon Snow’s bottom lip is out.

I know that there are more important things to be focusing on right now—namely, that he just proposed the daftest bloody idea any idiot has ever had, and that I think this idea is meant to kill me where I stand—but his lip is jutting out past his chin, and it’s distracting. No one should be forced to be this close to his lips; they’re a hazard. If he made this face when I was in the middle of a spell, I think I’d send the magic careening somewhere off the grounds from the sheer breaking of my concentration alone.

His whole being is a distraction, if I’m being honest, especially right now when he’s all flustered and bothered. His chest is puffed out like a bird’s, and his hair is too fluffy around the edges from where he’s run his fingers through it. His cheeks are flushed red, so red I can practically smell the blood rushing into them, and he has a hand resting on his hip, and it's moved his shirt up just enough for me to spot a sliver of gold skin jutting out from above the waistband of his pants.

And he looks like this when he’s asking me to fake date him.

“Well?” he says, and then his fingers are wrapped in his damnable curls again, pulling them into tufts that stand too high up on his head. I think I want to reach out and pat them down, but before I can do _that,_ he does something worse: he moves almost a full step closer to me.

We’re almost chest to chest now. If I took in just a bit too deep of a breath, our shirts would meet. I focus on my breathing and try to keep it even instead, but being this close to Snow is suffocating, and it’s not just from his magic. (Yes, his magic is a big part of it—it’s practically in a mist around him, sticky and hot. But I think he’d be smothering without it.) (I’d let him smother me, if he wanted. If he wanted to kill me, and if he was looking at me the way he is now, I think I would let him.) (A shocking realization to make today, really. I was hoping I could keep from realizing I was in love with him until at least seventh year. Maybe even after graduation if I repressed it enough. But here he is, sticking out that bottom lip…)

His lip trembles, and I feel my heart do the same.

Crowley.

I’m in love with him, and he wants me to fake date him.

“If you don’t want to do it,” he says in a rush, and he won’t look me in the eyes when he says it which is how I know he’s having a hard time even asking me this in the first place, “then that’s fine.” A golden, speckled hand pushes through his golden, speckled curls—he’s a picture made in gold foil and bronze ink—and I know, in that instant, that I am going to tell him yes. (I’ll let him finish what he’s saying first, though, because I’m pathetic and want to hear the Chosen One begging for my hand, even if it’s all to make some girl jealous. I want to hear him pleading for me to date him. It’ll give me enough material to make it through the rest of our years here. He’ll get the girl, and I’ll get to imagine that he actually wanted to be with me at one point in our lives.) “I just didn’t know who else to ask.”

“Don’t you hate me?” I say instead of providing him with a real answer. I raise an eyebrow up, sending him that look down my nose that I know he hates, and— _there_. He scrunches up his freckled nose exactly like I knew he would. His nostrils flare, and his eyes snap to mine. I have to remind myself to take in an easy breath.

“I do,” he concedes through gritted teeth (he’s always saying things through gritted teeth—I want to stick my tongue down his throat to ease the pressure, and the thought startles me even though I know it cannot be the first time I’ve thought it. Then it hits me that I might _actually have to stick my tongue down Simon Snow’s throat_ , and I think I might faint), and then he says something really unexpected when he continues with, “but I think you’re the only one who could pull this off.”

 _You’re the only one who could pull this off_.

He thinks that the only one who could pull off this fake dating scheme with him is the boy that has openly tormented him since the moment the Crucible cast them together. Fuck. Am I blessed that he’s this dense? Or is he on to me?

_Is Simon Snow on to me?_

“Not Bunce?” I say, crossing my arms and refusing to think about Simon Snow knowing that I’m in love with him. (There’s no way. I’m good at hiding it. Great, actually. I deserve a bloody award.) (There’s _no way_.) The sleeve of my jacket rubs against his shirt as I move it up, and I think that I can feel his warmth burning through it. I distantly wonder if I’m remembering the placement of the freckles on his chest correctly. I’m almost certain my wrist is level with one. “Not _literally anyone else_?”

“There’s not anyone else _to_ do it. Penelope is talking to Micah every day, so I’m pretty sure that they’re a thing, and Agatha…” Simon pauses and bites his lip, and I think that I’m going to combust. He looks away from me then; when he’s not staring at me with those blue eyes, I can almost convince myself that everything is fine and that I’m not about to fall apart as soon as he leaves.

The way he says Agatha’s name is like he’s trying to cradle it in his mouth; it’s like he’s trying to keep the shine on it. Like he’s afraid he’s going to ruin it just by placing it between his teeth.

With a start, I realize that he says her name like I say his.

Crowley, I’m living a cursed life.

I don’t think I can leave him waiting for an answer anymore. If I have to stand this close to the magical bomb that is Simon Snow for a minute longer, I’m either going to sink my teeth into him or kiss him until that bottom lip is bruised. I’m not really sure which one would be worse.

“Fine,” I say before he can come up with anything else to try and convince me. Or before he realizes that this is a terrible idea, which I’m still not sure he won’t do. Surely even Simon Snow will eventually figure out that this is an awful plan. I’ve got to milk this until he does. “Fine, Snow, I’ll do it.”

The grin that he gives me makes breaking my own heart almost worth it.

**SIMON**

I know it’s not the smartest idea. But I think that it’ll work, if Baz’ll give it a chance.

I mean, Agatha told me right before the summer break that she thought about me all the time. (She’d said, “Simon, you’re on my mind all the time. I can’t get you out of my head, even when you’re being stupid.” I had frowned. Then she’d cupped my face in her hand and said, “That’s a compliment, silly.” Then I’d smiled like a dumbass and left. Anyway.) That’s got to mean something, right? So I think that maybe if I make her jealous, she’ll do something about it. Or I’ll do something about it? I don’t know. I just want to make sure that she _really_ likes me before anything happens, you know?

That’s where Baz comes in.

I know that we hate each other. But he’s kind of the only person that I can really ask to do this. Penny’s trying to date Micah, I think. (I think they've been something since fourth year, but no one has used the words _boyfriend_ or _girlfriend_ yet, and I'm not about to be the first one to call them that.) I don’t want to mess...whatever that is up for her, and Agatha is—well, Agatha just _is_ , isn’t she? Can’t really ask her to fake date me to make her own self jealous. And...no one else compares, really. To Baz or to Agatha, I mean. They're like...I don't know. Like twin coins cast in different colors? Yeah. Something like that. They match, is what I'm trying to say.

“Okay,” I say to Baz, and I don’t know what makes me do it, but I reach out and clap a hand onto his shoulder. His grey eyes (dark like a storm, I think, or like new cement—I don’t know) snap down to look at my hand like I’ve singed him. At first, I think that maybe I have. But I don't feel like I've gone off. Is this just his reaction to me touching him?

This probably isn’t going to go well.

But he’s the only hope that I have, I think. So it’s got to.

“First thing,” I say as I move my hand back down to my side (he’s still looking at it like it’s stung him—I almost want to say that I’m sorry, but I don’t know what _for_ ), “we might want to work on is. Um. This.”

He cocks an eyebrow up. Should have expected it, honestly. Him to continue being a cocky prat even now, I mean. “Work on what, Snow?” he drawls out slowly. His arms are still crossed. I wish he would uncross them, so I could—what? Not feel so awkward standing across from him? So I could grab his hands and promise that I'm not going to burn him?

Fuck, we’re gonna have to hold hands, aren’t we?

Before I can think any more on it, I reach out and snag his wrist in my fingers, and then I move his hand into my other one and hold our looped fingers out in front of us between our chests. His fingers are longer than mine, and they feel warmer than I thought they would. (Was I thinking about how holding his hand would feel before now?) (No, he’s a _vampire_ ; of course I thought his hand would have been colder.) (But it’s not. It’s just a bit cool to the touch.) (And I’m not being attacked for holding it, so. There’s that.)

He’s just staring at our hands. Like I’ve burned him again. But I still don’t feel my magic _going off_. I don’t see red; I just see him.

“This,” I say softly. He’s still not looking at my face. For some reason, this makes something go cold in my belly. Or something. I press on. “No one will believe us if you look like—like I’ve burned you every time I touch you.”

His eyes snap up to me then.

“Every time you _touch me_ , Snow?” he seethes, and I think that he’s going to drop my hand then. But he doesn’t. Instead, he swings our hands down to the side and closes the distance between us until we’re standing with our torsos touching. (If I pushed my head forward, I think his mouth would land on my nose.) (When did he get so tall?) (I swear if I grow one inch, he grows two.) (Anyway.)

“If we are doing this,” he says, and I feel his breath hit my face as he leans down (prick), “there are going to be ground rules. I’m not going to—” He stops, and his features twist into disgust. “—to snog you in front of the entire school.”

Oh.

I hadn’t thought of that.

**BAZ**

He _has_ to know what he’s doing to me. He said the words, _Every time I touch you_. Like there’s going to be touching. No—like there’s going to be _lots of it_.

The thought of Simon bloody Snow _touching me_ almost sends me into hysterics.

I make a face and tell him I’ll not be snogging him in front of the entire school, and he looks _—Crowley,_ he looks _—_ hurt _._ (Did Snow expect me to _snog him in front of the entire school_? Was that the plan? Take me to the dining hall and snog me into the tables?) (I mean, that’s one way to do it, I guess, but—but that means he’ll be _kissing me_ , and I can’t even bloody handle his hand in mine. I might light us both on fire on accident.)

“I won’t _snog you_ if you don’t want,” he says. His teeth are bared down again; I halfway think he’s going to growl at me. “But you can’t—you can’t just—”

“Can’t _what_ , Snow?” There’s not much space between us, but I think to rid us of more of it anyway. The hand not currently holding Snow’s circles around his waist to rest at the spot on his lower back right above the line of his trousers and pushes him in. I think I’ve wanted to do that since before this conversation started. (I think I’ve wanted to do it almost every day since we met.)

Our hips are flush now, and I can feel the muscles in his thighs tense up against my own when he falls into me. His eyes widen, and his free hand snares my upper arm in a grip that’s almost painful. (I’m not going to tell him that it hurts, though. Because he’ll probably let go.) It does not leave my attention that the only parts of us not touching are our faces. (My hand is on Simon Snow’s back, and he’s not _going off_ like an A-bomb.) (My _body_ is on _Simon Snow’s body_ , and he’s not pushing me back.)

“Better,” he breathes into the inches between us. And then he smiles at me. And I know I’m absolutely done for.

“I can pretend that I fancy you, Snow, without letting you devour me in front of our classmates.” I gulp, and I hope he doesn’t notice the way that my eyes keep coming back to his lips. They’re so pink. So full. I have half a mind to lean forward and catch his bottom one in my mouth.

I think if I kiss him, I’ll never stop.

“Is that your rule then?” he says. I feel the words rumble through his chest and into my own. I wonder what they’d feel like rumbling through my mouth. “No snogging? What about everything else? Holding hands and—” I watch his eyebrows as he fumbles for the words and, just like always, loses them. I want to kiss the wrinkles between them to smooth his face out. Maybe I can help him practice his spells, given that we’re fake boyfriends now. He looks at me while I’m getting stuck on his brows and finishes his sentence with a weak, “—and the like?”

Alastair Crowley. I’ve got Simon Snow flush against me, asking if I’m comfortable with everything but kissing. Simon Snow stumbling over his words because he doesn’t know how to ask me what all we’re going to be doing in front of people to prove that we’re together. If I couldn’t feel his heat underneath my fingerpads, I’d assume that I was dreaming. (I’m still not entirely sure I’m not, even with his warmth radiating into my skin.) (But I don’t think my mind would just conjure this up. I don’t think my mind would even _dare_.)

“I’m all yours, Snow,” I say, mostly so he doesn’t have to. “Save for the snogging.”

“Alright,” he says through a grin. “All mine, save for the snogging.”

I try to convince myself that the smile is for me, pathetic fool that I am.

**SIMON**

I think this will work!

I mean, I don’t _know_ if it will, not really. But Baz is actually pretty good at this thing. He’s still holding me to him (he moved our bodies closer together, I guess to prove that he wasn’t going to stare at me like it hurt whenever we touched), and if I didn’t know any better, I’d think…

Well, I’d think…

 _No_.

I shake the thought away and smile at him instead. Because he’s a bloody good actor. Because it’s going to work. Because he’s the only person at Watford as posh and beautiful as Agatha—which makes him the perfect person for this. The _only_ person for this, if I’m honest.

**BAZ**

He smiles at me again, and I think, _This is going to kill me._

But if I get to die with Simon Snow holding my hand and gazing at me like he is right now, I’ll welcome the beyond gladly. I’ll walk into his sword singing his name. I’ll stand right next to him when he goes off, and I’ll let his magic ring clear through my body.

I’ll let him end me, if that’s what he wants.

I’m all his.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the only thing that even comes close to enemies to lovers is fake dating and i stand by that. it's even juicier when it's ENEMIES TO LOVERS FAKE DATING. in other words: my friend suggested the perfect fic trope, and i am going to run it into the dirt.


	2. A Lesson in Calming Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Baz learns something different during class.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> enjoy i guess :)

**BAZ**

Penelope Bunce is the first one we tell.

She asks us a litany of questions, of course. I expect it; I have the answers already waiting on my tongue.

“When did this happen?” _Yesterday. After tea._

“ _How_ did this happen?” _Snow and I got to talking and realized that our mutual hatred was based largely upon mutual pining. Strange, I know, but who can blame Snow for being such a dunce?_

“Somebody is pulling my chain, right?” _No. We’re serious._

“You're messing with me.” _I can assure you that we are not, Bunce._

“What about Agatha?” _What_ about _Agatha?_

“I mean…I just…I thought…” _You’ll hurt yourself doing that._

“Sod off, Pitch. Are you two actually—serious?” _I believe I’ve already answered that particular question, Penelope. But if you would like it repeated, then fine. Yes, we are serious. No, we are not messing with you. This is happening._

Simon’s no good at lying (he wears all of his emotions on his chest like bloody badges of honor; I can tell what he's feeling based on the way his jumper hangs off his body alone), so he lets me do all the talking. When Bunce says Agatha’s name, Simon’s hold on my hand tightens, and I lean sideways into him, pushing my shoulder into the crook of his neck. I can feel his curls graze against my cheek as he situates himself into a more comfortable position against me, and I try my hardest not to think about how well we fit together. But he’s right there pressed into me, and he’s smelling like cinnamon and spent magic (he always smells like spent magic, even when he hasn’t gone off)—of course I think about how well our bodies curve against each other. Of course the only thought in my head is how soft his curls feel against my skin when he fits himself into me. I can hardly think of anything else.

The clock hits half past by the time Bunce is done determining the legitimacy of my new relationship with Snow (and, I suspect, is done trying to convince herself that she's hallucinating the sight before her), and we’re all several minutes late for our first lesson. Penelope looks like she wants to ask Simon more, but he waves her off and tells her to head to her class since it's in the opposite direction of ours. (I think she'll probably corner him later to discuss this, and I just hope that Snow's able to hold it together long enough that I don't have to spell Bunce mute for a few days.) (I have the sneaking suspicion that she probably wouldn't approve of Simon fake dating me in order to stir Agatha to action.)

I don’t want us to move—I’m afraid Snow will never let us be this close again, and I like how warm he feels against my face—but Simon pulls himself away from me so he can hold fast to my fingers as he drags us down the corridor. (I hope he’ll let us do that again. Let us fit like puzzle pieces together again.) (It felt exactly like I’d always imagined it. Warm and soft and _homey_.) (Bloody fucking hell.)

I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this happy to get to class, but I try not to dwell on it.

(Is it because of me?)

Then we enter the classroom, and I remember that Agatha Wellbelove is taking this one with us, and I know exactly why Snow is smiling like that. Why he's grinning like he’s about to win a thousand pounds. Or like the Mage has just clapped him on the shoulder and told him he's proud.

(It’s not because of me. It never is.)

Her eyes are on us as soon as we enter, because of course they are. Where else would she be staring? Who else would she be looking at?

What could be more shocking than the Chosen One walking hand-in-hand with his demented gay nemesis?

I swallow. Force a breath into my lungs, then force it back out. Raise an eyebrow in Wellbelove’s direction and then turn my attention back to Snow as he drags me into the empty seat next to him.

The look I catch on Wellbelove’s face before I turn back—well. Maybe Snow’s plan isn’t so stupid after all. She looks…

She looks like she’s staring at her crush holding hands with somebody else. I can see it in her eyes; she’s just as bad at Snow is at making a poker face, which is to say that she’s not got one at all. The hurt is resting in her eyes, hanging in her cheeks; the confusion is splayed out in the wrinkles forming on her forehead and between her perfectly sculpted brows.

I shake my shoulders. Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

There are murmurs all around us—I don’t have to have intensified hearing to know that they’re all about us, but it certainly helps. _Is that real? Yo, Simon and Baz?! When the hell did_ that _happen? Don’t they hate each other?_

Swallow. Breath forced in, then back out. Eyebrow raised at the general vicinity. Lip curled up in a snarl.

Snow’s hand heats up in mine. I turn to glance at him, thinking he’s tried to cast some heat spell that I somehow haven’t heard, and—shit. His face is flushed a nice rose gold color, and his thick eyebrows are scrunching up together again. His free hand is trapped around his curls. (It looks like it hurts.) (Would he mind if I reached over and brought his hand back down?) (Does that cross a line? Would I get blown up on the spot?)

But none of that compares to the well of magic I can feel dripping off him. I’ve tasted this before; it’s sticking to the roof of my mouth the same way it always does, and it's making it hard to swallow.

He’s about to go off.

**SIMON**

I didn’t think this through.

I never do—I never fucking _think_ , and now everyone’s staring at us. At _me_. At me holding Baz’s hand, and I—I can’t. I just fucking _can’t_.

Everything goes a bit red around the edges.

**BAZ**

I don’t know what to do.

We haven’t gone over this. What I’m allowed to do when he gets worked up. How I’m expected to handle him _going off_ as his boyfriend instead of as the one who’s set him to blow. Do I hold his hand tighter? Do I let it go?

I don’t know what he would want me to do.

**SIMON**

I don’t know what I want Baz to do. I don’t know if I want him to do anything.

I think this was all a big mistake.

**BAZ**

I don’t know what he wants me to do, so I don’t even ask; I just do what I’ve always wanted to do whenever he gets like this.

Without thinking more about it (I’m afraid I’ll do nothing—like I always do—if I wait any longer), I reach over and cup a side of Simon Snow’s face in one of my hands; it’s warm against my palm, just like I’ve always known it would be. I bring my other hand up and grab him by the other cheek, and turn his face to mine, and stare into his pale blue eyes, and force him to look at me too.

I don't care that people can see us; I don't _care_ that we're interrupting the lesson. If anybody has any better ideas, they are welcome to try them. But, for now, I'm the one trying to take Snow down off the ledge. I think I can hear chairs moving away from us and different calming spells being cast, but I know they won't do him any good. Things like _o_ _pen space_ and _more magic_ only make this worse for him. (I would know; I've been the reason he's gone off almost every time he's done it. I know what sends him spiraling.) It gives his magic more air to fill and more energy to absorb, neither of which he needs.

What he needs right now is someone close to calm him down.

“Hey,” I say. I’m staring straight into blue eyes framed by bronze curls and freckles galore (he’s got them everywhere—under his eyes, dotted on his cheeks, beneath his ears), and he isn’t pushing me away. This is the closest we've ever been, I think, face-to-face. (Save for the other night. But I'm still not sure that wasn't some kind of hyper-realistic dream.) (This, _this_ is real, without any doubt.) His hands come up to circle my wrists, but not like he’s trying to tear them off—more like he’s trying to make sure they don’t leave. More like he’s purposefully holding onto me. “Hey, Snow, it’s okay. You are alright.”

His breath is coming in sharp gasps like he’s been stabbed. I make a cursory glance over the rest of his body, just to make sure he hasn’t _actually_ been hurt, and I catch his sword blinking in and out over his hip.

Crowley, he hasn’t even said the bloody incantation! If he keeps it up, I’m afraid he’s going to bring it out and impale me on accident, and then I won’t be able to focus on keeping my fingers pressed to the tips of his ears because I'll have to focus on not bleeding out onto our classroom floor.

“ _Hey_ ,” I say again when I look back at his face. “Simon, love, calm down. You are _fine_. Everything is _fine_. Breathe with me."

**SIMON**

He called me Simon.

**BAZ**

I don't risk another glance down at his hip until we've been staring at each other and breathing at the same pace for a little while. If I take a deep breath, he takes one half a second after. If I exhale a slow breath out, he exhales into the same space right behind me.

When I do look down, the sword is nowhere to be found.

**SIMON**

And then he called me _love_.

**BAZ**

When I look back at him, he’s cocking his head to the side and pulling my hands down into the space between our laps. I sniff the air, and he still smells like cinnamon and bacon and magic. But magic turned down a couple notches. Magic when it’s holding steady under his skin instead of sliding out of his pores. His breathing is still too shallow, and his hands are still way too hot, but. But he isn't blacking out and destroying everything. But he isn't drowning me in his heat.

But he isn't going off; he barely even seems to be at the brink of it anymore.

“You called me Simon,” he says.

“I didn’t,” I reply back, because I refuse to give him an inch. (And because I’m hoping that if I can convince him I never called him by his first name that I can also convince him that I didn’t call him a bloody term of endearment right afterwards.)

**AGATHA**

What the _fuck_ just happened?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you enjoy this piece so far maybe you could check out my other fic Carry On Without?? (pretend i've inserted the face emoji with the giant cute eyes here) it's got like.....feral baz, devoted penelope, worried agatha, and insecure simon. it's also a one-shot with over 10k words so


	3. Teatime Problem Solving

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Agatha and Penny try to figure something out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i haven't updated in two months but it's FINE because here's a chapter now!!

**AGATHA**

I don’t understand what’s going on.

I pick up my bag, but I don’t move yet. This is…I’ve still got so much to absorb.

I mean…I thought Simon liked me. Like, _liked_ me—he was giving me all the signs. And I’m not usually wrong about this sort of thing. I noticed him staring at me all last year, even when I wasn’t talking to him; he was staring at me more than he was staring at _Baz_ , which seemed pretty special since I knew he wasn’t plotting my demise or worrying that I was plotting his. (Pretty soon after I started noticing _that_ , I started noticing that _I_ was staring at him all the time, too. And that his face was really quite cute, if you could get past all the moles and freckles.) (Not that moles and freckles aren’t cute. They are. But they kind of absorb Simon’s face a little bit. It’s like I can’t make out his other features because they’re all blotted out by spots.) I thought he was going to ask me out or something, especially after I confessed to him right before break that he was on my mind constantly.

I slowly start to walk to the door. I’m the last person to leave this class; I think even the teacher left the room before I did because I don’t see her in my field of vision. (I couldn't focus the entire lesson. Baz and Simon were touching arms the whole rest of class after his little incident. It made me miserable, so I just kept myself zoned out until now.) I’m going to be late for my next class, but I don’t really care.

Because _I confessed to Simon right before break that he was on my mind constantly_. I’ve _never_ had to be that forward with a guy before. All I usually have to do is smile a little softer, and they’ve got the hint. Not Simon, though. (I tried softer smiles. He wouldn’t react.) Apparently, Simon needs a grand gesture, and I thought I’d given that to him with my grand confession. There was _no way_ to read that as anything other than me liking him. Right? People don't go up to someone they think of as a friend and say, "I think about you all the time." That's not something that happens.

I thought that he’d _do_ something then. Kiss me maybe. Grab my hand and tell me he thought about me all the time too. But he didn’t. He just smiled like I’d handed him something really special. Then the Mage beckoned him over, and I haven’t been able to talk to him all summer because of the Mage’s stupid no-contact rule.

Someone bumps into me, or maybe I bump into them. I mumble out a quick apology either way and continue walking.

I figured we’d talk today. After our first class, maybe—or at tea, most likely—and that we’d sort this all out. My plan was that I’d have a new boyfriend by the time the day was over. I’d be able to tell Mum and everyone else that I _finally_ started dating Simon Snow, and they could all get off my back about it. Maybe I’d get to go a visit without being reminded of how precious and wonderful he is—because I’d already know these things from being with him.

And I’d…well, I’d get to hold his hand and figure out if I wanted him to hold mine back. Or maybe if I just wanted him to stand there and remind me that I liked him.

I pull into a little alcove tucked into the wall and stare into the stone as I breathe. My breathing’s not fast, not yet, but I think it’s going to be if I don’t take a minute to just stand and count it. I can’t think about this Simon stuff while I’m moving; I’ll probably mow somebody down.

I’m not going to get the chance to figure any of the Simon stuff out now. I thought I had time—timeto talk with him and get this stuff sorted, time to hold him close to me and realize if I wanted to keep holding him or not, time to figure out if I wanted to be with him because I genuinely wanted to date him or if I wanted to be with him because everyone else _told_ me I should want to be.

But then Simon walked into Magical Theory III _holding Baz’s hand_.

The Chosen One was holding _Baz Pitch’s_ hand this morning. Like they were coupled up or something.

I thought I was being tricked. That someone was pulling a prank on me. _Hey, Simon and Baz are together, did you hear? Ha-ha! Jokes!_ I kind of still do. But Simon started doing that thing before he goes off—that thing where he starts leaking magic everywhere like a burst pipe—and nothing anybody did was helping, because it never does, and Baz…

Baz _stopped_ him. Baz held his face in his hands and talked him down.

Baz turned a _going off_ into a _going back in_.

I don’t think even Penny’s been able to do that. Usually, we just let him explode and piece him back together afterwards. (I know that sounds mean, but we all tried to bring him back down to earth before, and it never, ever worked. We did it a lot when we were younger, and none of it ever did anything. Simon would still go off, and the rest of us would smell like a campfire for a week afterwards.) (Pretty quickly, we learned to just get out of range and let him roll through the chaos.) (If I was his girlfriend, maybe I could help keep him together for longer.)

I just…

I don’t understand this. Like, did I do something? I know we didn’t talk after my declaration, but that isn’t _my_ fault. If the Mage would give Simon a bloody mobile—and if he wouldn’t charm it to keep any of us from messaging Simon once term was over—then we could have talked about everything. That’s what I thought we would be doing _today_. That’s what I thought we could have been doing right _now_.

I never thought that not talking would lead to…this. To Simon holding hands with somebody else. To Simon not even sparing me a second glance all class.

I sigh against the brick and stone. I’ve got to get to class…

But I’ve also got to talk to Penny. Maybe she can explain this away.

**…**

I go to class.

I’ll talk to Penny during tea, when I was supposed to be talking to Simon. And she’ll come up with the answer like she always does, and she’ll help me fix this.

**PENNY**

I don’t have any answers for Agatha because I’m just as lost as she is.

“I’m just as lost as you,” I tell her over our tea. “I didn’t see this coming either.”

“It’s just…” She trails off and scrunches her lips together like she’s thinking really hard about what to say next. And I can’t blame her—for once, I actually don't know what to say back.

Simon and Baz are, apparently, together, and… _eugh_. That doesn’t even sound right. The words _Simon and Baz_ should never be uttered unless they’re followed with _are fighting_ or _are enemies_ or _want to kill each other_. That phrase should never, ever be followed by _are_ _together_. I still can’t believe this. That they’re…that they are actually…Merlin and Morgana, I just can’t.

It doesn’t make any bloody sense!

They’ve been sworn enemies basically since the Crucible cast them as roommates. It doesn’t make _sense_ for them to be _dating now_. It doesn’t make sense, in any universe, for them to be dating, at any time, for any reason, ever at all.

And…I mean…

I didn’t even think Simon was gay.

I mean, he never _said_ he was. And he’s only ever told me about liking Agatha. (Although…I guess he does say some weird things sometimes. He uses the word ‘fit’ a lot. And usually not when he’s talking about girls.) (But, so what? I use the word ‘pretty’ a lot when I talk about girls; that doesn’t make me gay. It makes me have eyes.)

I guess I figured that he’d tell me. If he was. Which is why I can’t understand this.

Agatha parts her lips and starts talking again, pulling me out of my thoughts for a moment. She wasn’t looking at me before—well, I don’t _think_ she was—but now she is, and I don’t really like the look in her eyes. It’s like she’s hurting somewhere that I can't see. Or like someone’s taken a swipe at her. Her next words tumble out in a rush, like she’s afraid she won’t say them if she doesn’t say them at lightning speed: “You thought that Simon liked me too, didn’t you? It wasn’t just me?”

Oh. Of course she looks the way she does. She liked Simon too.

“Yes,” I say almost before she’s done with her sentence. Then I press on, because I think I’ve answered the wrong question. “It wasn’t just you. I definitely thought he liked you.”

“Then _why_ —ugh.” She takes a hand and scrapes it through her hair, and I kind of want to wince because it looks really painful. (I think she regrets doing it too, judging by the wash of pain that comes over her face.) (I decide not to mention it, because she’s already going through a lot.)

I really thought that they’d start dating before the summer break started. I mean, they were mooning over each other all term; I was half-afraid I’d be caught in the middle whenever they finally realized the other one liked them. Agatha told me her plan to confess some of her feelings to Simon, and I told her to go for it. Because I thought—no, I _knew_ —that he’d reciprocate. He talked about her almost as much as he talked about Baz. He called her “the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen,” like, two minutes after the start of last term.

(“I didn’t know girls could be as pretty as her,” he said. We’d been friends with her for a while at that point, and I think seeing her after being away all summer finally made it sink in how pretty she was. I don’t think he’d ever taken a good look at her before then—too busy fighting with Baz. “She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”

“How are you only _now_ realizing this?” I asked. “We’ve known her for a long time. We’ve gone on _missions_ with her, Simon. You’ve spent loads of time with her.”

“Yeah,” he said, but he wasn’t eyeing her or paying any real attention to me any longer. I followed his line of sight and found Baz waiting at the end of it, sneering, as always.

“You need to stop looking at Baz,” I said, grabbing his shoulders and forcefully turning him towards me, “and start looking around you, Simon. There’s pretty girls everywhere.” I glanced around the Lawn then, and I saw Philippa Stainton looking our way and blushing like mad, so I added, “And I think that most of them would want to date you if you’d give them the time of day.” He just shrugged.)

I take a sip of my tea before I speak again. “I don’t know why this happened.” And, just to reiterate it, I say, “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Right?” She seems relieved. I guess she would be, given that I’m proof that she isn’t losing her mind.

I debate for a second whether I should tell her the idea I’ve been pushing back all day, but the debate doesn’t last long. The hurt is still in every line on her face, and it makes her eyes sort of dull, and I really, really want it to go away. I have to tell her what I’m thinking, even if it winds up being wrong. (But I’m pretty sure it’s not wrong.)

I look around to make sure that nobody else is within earshot—and to double check that Simon still hasn't showed up, which he hasn't, even though it's half past teatime and Simon _never_ misses tea—and then I lean in across the table and motion with my hand for Agatha to do the same. Once we’re both bent towards the center, I whisper, “I think that there’s something going on that we aren’t seeing.”

Her eyes widen, and I can almost pretend that they’re still not sitting like two pieces of wet cardboard underneath her brows. (Her eyes are normally bright, like copper when it’s in the sun. This soaked cardboard shade…it’s not her.) “Like what?”

“Like…” I swallow, look around again, and then whisper even quieter like I’m bringing Agatha into a conspiracy (because I think that maybe I am), “Like a love spell.”

Agatha shoots back into her seat and stares at me like I’ve set my hair on fire or something. Both of her hands are pinched around the edge of the table; I think she might be forcing herself not to run away.

It’s a big accusation, I know that. You don’t go around accusing someone of casting a love spell unless you’re absolutely sure; that kind of thing coming out can ruin somebody’s reputation as a mage if their intentions were bad enough when they cast it. And I really didn’t think that Baz had the magic to pull it off, so it didn't seem like the right answer. (Sure, he’s a Pitch, and he’s powerful, but I didn’t think he was _that_ powerful.) (I didn’t think he had the magic behind him to turn Simon into _mush_.) But with the way Simon’s acting…

“What _kind_ of love spell?” she asks quietly after a few moments. She’s still holding onto the table like it’s a tether—without really thinking anything of it, I reach across and put one of my hands over hers, and she (surprisingly!) doesn’t pull her fingers back. (She’s never been too fond of physical affection, I think, at least when it comes to friends.) (Which we bloody well are, even if she sometimes likes to pretend that we’re not. I don’t hang around her just so Simon has someone pretty to look at; I hang around her because she’s good people most of the time.) (Anyway. She’s letting me hold her hand to comfort her. Hooray for small victories.)

I’ve had a lot of time to think about different spells, but I still say, “I’m not sure.”

 **Love of my life** could have done this, maybe, especially if Baz cast it when they were both in their room; so could **You’re the one that I want** , I think, although I’m not completely sure what all it does since I’ve never tried anything _close_ to that kind of spell before. (Not to be a braggart, but _I_ don’t have to cast forbidden love spells to get someone to like me.) I didn’t even pay attention in any of my classes this morning because I was too busy trying to remember all the different love spells we’d ever heard about…and busy trying to convince myself that even _Baz_ wouldn’t do that.

“ **Love of my life** ,” I decide to tell her. “ **You’re the one that I want**. Something that’s based on the caster’s emotions.” Although, if I’m remembering correctly, Simon would still have to _choose_ to be with Baz after the initial dopamine rush…and I still don't know how Baz could fuel those spells with his hate...

Agatha chews on her bottom lip for a few seconds and stares at the tabletop like it’ll give her the answer. It's kind of like she's searching her brain for something. Once she appears satisfied, she looks back up at me. “What about **The opposite of love is not hate**?” she asks. If she were Simon, she’d be titling her head to the side right now—but she isn’t Simon, so she doesn’t do that. When she’s waiting on someone to respond to what she’s thinking, she stares at them head-on the whole time. No softening the blow, no hedging her words, and no cocking her head sideways like an interested puppy dog. (She’d be great for Simon. She could teach him how to stand his ground without blowing himself and the ground up.) “With how much Simon hates Baz, it’d be pretty easy to shift it, don’t you think?”

Morgan’s tooth, I hadn’t thought of that spell. But Agatha makes a good point—it _would_ be pretty easy to push Simon’s emotions a little to the left of hate. He’s definitely passionate enough when it comes to Baz…

But none of that explains _why_ Baz would do this! Or why he would even _want_ to!

Unless…

“Oh, Nicks and Slicks,” I say, slamming both of my hands down flat onto the table and shoving myself up to a standing position. (My glasses shake loose from the motion and almost fall off my face, but I catch them just in time and reposition them.) I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to come up with this! It’s so obvious! “Does this mean that—”

“—Baz is in love with Simon?” Agatha says at the same time that I say, “—Baz is tricking Simon so he can kill him?”

“ _What_?” I ask her before she can say anything else. Because I must have misheard. There is no _way_ she just suggested what she did; she’s not _that_ stupid. (Not that she's actually stupid. Just...nevermind.) “ _Baz_?” I sputter. “In _love_ with _Simon_?”

Agatha’s face goes a little rosy around the edges. (She flushes kind of like Simon flushes, in the cheeks and the ears.) “Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it? And you're the one who brought up love spells based off the emotions of the person who casts them. Why would he use a love spell if he’s just going to kill him?”

“So that Simon becomes more vulnerable!” I shout, ignoring the first part of what she says. (I still can't fathom that. The idea that Baz harbors any kind of feeling for Simon that isn't hate. There's no way.) It’s all coming together now! The way Simon was clinging to Baz this morning, the satisfied look Baz had on his face when Simon squished into him, the fact Baz had all his answers to my questions ready…

It was all part of this plot!

“You don’t think he’s vulnerable enough when he’s asleep in their room?” Agatha asks, and now she does twist her head to the side a little, like she’s exasperated with me. But I’m exasperating all the time; she should be used to this by now.

I sigh and push my glasses up my nose again. “I think that Baz won’t risk the Anathema. He knows that he’ll get kicked out if he hurts Simon in their room, so he’s trying to lure him somewhere else. Best way to get somebody to follow you around blindly is to have them be in love with you!” She should know; Simon was following her around like a lost lamb all last year. (I don't _think_ he's fully in love with her yet, but I _do_ think he was getting there before this whole Baz debacle.)

Agatha still doesn’t seem convinced, even though she should be. I don’t understand why she isn’t agreeing with me; this explains all of it! This explains the whole thing! This—

“Why would Baz,” she starts, interrupting my thought process, “have stopped Simon from going off this morning if he just wants to hurt him?”

I can’t help it when I yell, “ _WHAT?_ ” and cause every head in the cafeteria to swivel our way. (It's like I've cast **Over here**. I don't like it very much, but what can you do?)

"Yeah," she whispers, glaring at me (probably for causing a scene). But how can she blame me? She just told me that Baz Pitch did the _impossible_ and kept Simon from exploding! In what _universe_ is that not cause for concern? _I_ can barely keep Simon contained most of the time, and I'm his best friend! Suddenly, his sworn nemesis is talking him down? That doesn't sit right with me. "He stopped him while Simon was in the middle of going off."

And _then_ she says, rather miserably, "He held his face in his hands and everything. Looked like they would have kissed if Simon hadn't been on the brink."

"I have to go," I say, but I throw it over my shoulder after I've already started walking away from the table, so I'm not sure if Agatha hears me. I mostly don't care if she does; I'm much more determined to see what Baz or Simon have to say for themselves. They never came for tea, which probably means they're off somewhere together, which probably means I'm about to lose it.

Because if Baz stopped Simon from going off...if Baz got that close to Simon to keep him steady...

Then there's got to be a reason for it.

And I intend to find out what it is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you to the person who commented asking if i would ever update this story. i never think that my stories are stories that people genuinely want to read so it uh like made my day when someone actually wanted this story to continue :) thank you


	4. Counter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Simon won't stop staring. Baz casts a daft spell. Simon and Baz begin their list of rules.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so much happens in this chapter, and not a bit of it was in my outline. damn.

**BAZ**

Simon won’t stop looking at me.

I figured he might do this, given…everything. But I’m still not prepared for it.

He’s been staring at me every chance he gets, like he’s a deer and I’m the bloody headlight. I can’t stand being on the receiving end of it this long; I’m not equipped to live through him looking at me this much. (Every time I look up, there he is, staring at me under his lashes.) (His _long_ lashes, I should add. They’re longer than _mine_. They give him an unhealthy amount of cover when he’s peering at you from under them. Make the blue in his eyes shine different. Like it’s special.)

Everyone else has been staring at me too, but I can’t _feel_ their gazes like I can feel his moving over my skin. I can’t taste their magic like I can taste his suspended in my mouth after every breath. It makes me worry that he’s going to go off when I’m not paying enough attention.

Normally, the taste Simon’s magic leaves behind once he’s gone off is like a campfire that’s already been dead for an hour or two—you can be mostly rid of it once he’s finished and you’ve changed clothes and rinsed your mouth out in the sink. This isn’t like that; this is like an entire forest fire that’s just barely been extinguished, and I’m standing right next to the smoldering remains, sucking in all the smoke that just won’t stop pouring out.

I can still smell it on me even in the classes that we don’t have together. It’s clinging to my uniform and sticking to my hair; it’s plastering itself to the bottoms of my shoes and latching onto the covers of my books. It’s like his magic is seeking me out. Like it’s leaking under his classroom doors and scouring the rest of the school just to find me and hang off me like a second skin.

This isn’t his normal behavior. He’s never _continuously leaked magic_ in order to keep tabs on me. I’ve never felt his magic hanging onto my wrists or spinning about my throat like a cloud. I’ve never felt it clumping under my fingernails and mixing into my hair.

It’s driving me absolutely fucking mental.

I don’t even go to lunch when the time comes. Instead, I scurry to the Catacombs before Snow can find me, hoping that he’ll take the bloody hint and leave me to spend time down here in peace. Because I know, I _know_ , that even if Agatha were sat next to him at the lunch table swooning, he’d still be staring at me across the cafeteria the whole time—I know it like I know that I’m a vampire. I know it like I know that he’s going to have to kill me someday.

And I don’t know what to do with that information.

I can still _feel_ it; I can feel how much he’s trying to find me, even when I’m hidden next to my mother’s grave. At one point, I think that his magic swells and that he’s found his way to me, but it goes away, and I breathe a sigh of relief.

I can handle this magic. I can handle the smoke. Once, Dev swiped one of Fiona’s cigarettes while she wasn’t paying him any mind, and we held onto it for a week before we dared to smoke it. I was worried that I was going to burn from the inside out in the woods with Dev—but I didn’t. We thought for sure that Fiona would find and murder us once she did the math and came up short a stick, but she never did. Instead, the next time I saw her, she bent down and held onto my shoulders and said, “ _Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. You are fucking flammable. Leave the smoke for the rest of us, okay, boyo?_ ”

Anyway. If I can take one of Fiona’s cigarettes without bursting into flame, I can handle this. I can handle Snow’s magic; I’ve been handling it for years. I’ve been handling _him_ for years—every punch, kick, sneer, and spell of his, I’ve dealt with. I’ve been in the splash zone of his power for too long now; I can work with a little more of it hitting me.

I just need him to stop staring at me.

When I go to my second class after lunch period (the first one is on a completely separate floor than the one Simon has after lunch, so I'm able to avoid him just fine then), I feel Snow’s magic ramp up again, frantic and desperate, the closer he gets to the classroom. When he does arrive and takes the remaining aisle seat that’s empty next to me (since no one else wants to sit next to an atomic bomb that might blow up twice in one day, I’m assuming), the hand rushing through his hair stills, and his face softens up. In the next breath, his magic softens up, too, just a bit.

“Baz—” he whispers, but I shake my head.

I’m not…ready. For whatever it is he wants to tell me. For whatever it is he’s decided we need to discuss.

I mean. I _know_ what he wants to discuss. He wants to talk about what happened earlier, when I got him out of going off. But I don’t want to relive that. I don’t want to think more about when I called him “love.” I don’t want to think more about how angry he’s probably going to be when he talks about how I called him something like that.

_“I know that we’re fake dating, but you can’t call me things like that.”_

I can handle his magic.

_“This is all for Agatha, and we’re not actually dating.”_

But I can’t handle this.

_“You can’t just do that, Baz. I’m not your fucking boyfriend.”_

This isn’t an act of violence or a harsh word thrown out too quick; this is me exposing all of my weaknesses and telling him not to strike me down. This is me handing the Chosen One the key to unlocking the Pitch Heir’s heart and letting him destroy it forever.

I can’t have him telling me what I already know he’s thinking in his head. It’ll hurt worse than anything we’ve ever done to each other, and then I’ll feel like a fool for agreeing to his stupid scheme in the first place. (I _am_ a fool for agreeing to his stupid scheme in the first place. But I don’t want him to know that just yet.)

We’re learning about counter spells in class today, and I know before Miss Possibelf even starts calling out names that today is a partner day. The teachers know about the whole rivals-destined-to-kill-each-other thing, so they’re usually very good at not allowing us to be joined up for a project unless it is absolutely required, thank magic.

She must like how chummy we seem now, because I end up with Snow as my partner.

“Baz, I—” he tries again once we’ve officially been assigned to each other, but I stand and shut him up with a, well, **Shut up**. It doesn’t last long, though, because his mouth wasn’t in the right position for the spell to stitch his lips shut. (If I’d been paying attention, I would have known that. But I wasn’t paying attention. I just wanted him to stop talking. Spell, wasted.)

“ **Stop that** ,” he says, standing up too, and I know he’s only talking to me, but with how ditzy his magic has been today, the entire class stops what they’re doing. Not all of them stare at us—but most of them do.

“ **As you were** ,” Miss Possibelf immediately counters, like she knew that this would happen. Then, after everyone’s talking again: “Good work, Simon, but focus on your range. You’re still casting too broad.”

“Er,” he says in reply. (I want to kiss where the tops of his ears have gone red. I think he’d kill me if I did.) “Yeah. Will do.”

When he turns his attention back to me, I immediately cast **Daft as a brush** , but I curse myself in my head the second I do it because that's a big spell that I'm technically not supposed to cast yet, and I am definitely in its proximi…

What was I saying?

I don’t remember.

Simon’s face screws up like he’s just sucked on a lemon, and then it twists back out to his normal speckled perfection. He reaches for me and puts his free hand on my face. (His other hand is holding a stick. A _wand_ , I mean.) (I think I’m holding one too. I have a feeling I’m not supposed to let it go, so I don’t.) I don’t know why I’m not kissing his palm, so I tilt my head and do it. He does not pull away. I think he’s looking at my lips. I think I’m looking at his.

“Baz,” he says groggily. I feel groggy too. Like someone has done…something. I can’t think right now. I can’t make sense of most of the things in my head. It’s all frantic and jumbled. I push it away and focus back on Simon’s mouth.

“Mm,” I mumble. I take a step forward without meaning to, but it’s okay, because Simon does the same thing. The way that we’re standing almost reminds me of something else, but it fades.

When did our faces get so close? I can see every mark on his skin. Every mole and freckle and bump; every new scratch and old scratch, too. He looks like he gets hurt a lot. I think some of those old scars are from me. I don’t why I would ever hurt him; I can’t remember ever wanting to.

“I need to tell you something,” he says, but I’m not paying attention.

Why are our faces not _closer_? I want to kiss him.

I can’t recall why I’ve never kissed him.

“Oh, for Merlin’s sake, boys! None of that! **Knowledge is power**!”

Suddenly, my thoughts begin to make a lot more sense.

_WhatareyoudoingwhatishappeningpleaseregaincontrolofyourselfBazyouareafuckingPITCH._

_ForCrowley’ssakedoNOTkissSnowwhatareyoudoingdoyouknowhowstupidthisispleaseSTOP._

_You’veneverkissedhimbecauseyou’renotanIDIOT. MERLINALIVESTOPIT._

I jump back, wrenching my face away from Simon’s fingers and putting a few extra feet of space between us in the process. If I didn’t know any better—which I do now, thankfully, since Miss Possibelf gave me back my mind—I’d say that Snow looks put off that I moved away from him, but I don’t entertain that idea at all.

“That spell was…” Snow says, shaking his head like a dog shakes out its coat. (He may not be stupid anymore, but he is still perfectly uncivilized.) (Crowley, did I really say to myself that his face was _perfection_? That’s cliché, even for me.) (Did I really forget what a _wand_ was called?) “A lot.”

I can’t help my reply—we’ve spent too long at each other’s throats, so it comes naturally when I sneer and say, “Perhaps if your intellect weren’t that of a poorly trained dog’s, you could have deflected the spell.”

I don’t think boyfriends say that sort of thing, do they?

Snow cocks his head at me, and I eye the mole on his neck that I’ve been eyeing for what feels like all my life. (I cannot _believe_ my own spell made me forget what a _wand_ was. I am unwell.) (Powerful, but unwell.) “Dogs are plenty smart.”

“Not as smart as a _mage_.”

“You were affected by the spell too.” He noticed. Bully for me.

I elect to ignore the fact that Snow knows the stupidity spell got me too. If I simply pretend that he doesn’t know, then he simply doesn’t. I will force this into existence. I will not be embarrassed twice in one day. “I was not.”

“You _were_.”

“Wasn’t.”

“You _were_ , Baz! Don’t lie to me!” Ah, that’s more like it—instead of looking at me like he’s trying to puzzle something out, his gaze shifts into more of that anger that I’m used to. His eyes go sharp, his jaw clenches, and I can sense his magic go a little dryer too. I glance down, and _yes_ , there’s that clenched fist waiting at his hip. Angry Snow is so much easier to deal with than Deducing Snow.

“I wasn’t,” I say, dusting off nonexistent lint from my uniform. “Now cast a spell so I can show you how a counter works.”

He scowls, and I know I’ve won.

“ **Stand your ground** ,” he says, which I immediately kill with **Get a move on**.

We go back and forth like that until class is dismissed, him trying to keep his spells locked on me, me firing back counter spells before any damage can be done to myself or anyone else. He’s doing a fine job of keeping his magic aimed mostly at me now, but I catch Miss Possibelf muttering spells under her breath whenever his magic starts pouring over the sides again. In those moments, I say, “Snow,” or I say, “Mage’s Heir,” or I say, “Chosen One,” and that usually brings him back to me, snarls and all.

I do _not_ call him by his first name.

I don’t want to know if it would make him focus better than everything else.

When it comes time to leave, I try to run out before Snow can start talking at me again, but I only make it a few steps into the hallway before he’s caught up to me and is tugging at my jacket. “ _Baz_ ,” he says, and it’s the way that he says it that makes me actually stop and look at him.

I drink him in. His brows are furrowed, and his face is tinted all rosy again. And he looks…pained, I think. Like it’s hurting him to not be able to talk to me like he wants to.

Oh, Simon, how am I supposed to fight that look? How am I supposed to ignore it?

I sigh and purse my lips. He’s still got that pained look draped over his features, like he’s wearing it just so I have to look at it more.

I can’t say no to him.

I nod my head once and gesture with my hand in the general direction of Mummers House. His eyes narrow, and I sigh out the words, “Our room, Snow.” Understanding dawns in his face, and he begins walking us to our tower, glancing over his shoulder every few seconds to make sure I’m still following.

I’m thankful he didn’t fight me on this. That he accepted that this was happening in our room, away from everybody else. I am _not_ doing this in the cafeteria over tea. I’m not going to have the school watch Simon wrangle my heart into his hands and squeeze.

I suppose it was always going to end like this. With me exposing too much of myself and Simon wising up to it. I mean, if me calling him _love_ wasn’t enough, I can’t explain what happened in our last class. I can’t pretend like I didn’t kiss the inside of his hand. I can’t come up with anything that excuses anything I did after the spell hit.

Except the truth.

We’re almost to our room now, and Simon hasn’t said anything else; neither have I. I'm too busy trying to come up with everything he could possibly say to me once we're there. _You shouldn't have done any of the stuff you did earlier. Also, I'm not gay, which you should know by now. Also, I hate you._ I'm prepared for it. Not prepared _well_ , mind you, but I'm prepared. Nothing he says is going to surprise me because I'm not going to let it.

Snow is never going to hear me say that I’m in love with him. He may know it now, but he is not going to have the luxury of hearing the words cross my lips. He may end this fake dating situation because of it, and he may spread the word all around Watford, but he will not have my admission. I will not give something else to Simon Snow to hold over my head.

When we get to the top of the stairs, he pushes the door open and immediately goes to the desk on his side of the room. As I’m standing in the threshold, I debate whether I should sprint back down the stairs while the door’s still open—if I should leave Snow here in our room and take up permanent residence in the Catacombs, I’m sure the rats won’t mind—but before I get up the nerve to move in any direction, Snow has finished rifling through his desk and is looking at me again with a piece of paper and a pen in his hands.

I’m frozen in place as he comes to stand in front of me. I want to step back. I want to run out of this tower and never return. But I’m watching him, curls shining in the afternoon sunlight and face still flushed in all the right places, and I can’t bring myself to move at all.

“After this morning,” he says, keeping his gaze fixed somewhere that is decidedly _not_ my eyes (I think he’s staring at my neck), “I wanted to talk to you about coming up with a. Um.” He loses purchase on his words and gulps, eyes _now_ darting between my own and the paper in his hand. I think he’s looking for encouragement in my face, and I contemplate being mean, about saying something rude and incendiary like I always do…but I don’t. It would be so easy to. But I don't. Instead, I give him what he wants in the form of a small smile and a slight raise of my eyebrows.

 _Keep going_ , I want my face to say. _Keep talking to me right now_. Because this isn't at all what I expected. I expected him to whip around and start yelling at me, or laughing at me, or taking out the Sword of Mages and threatening me. Not...not him grabbing something to write with and shoving it into my space. I allow the hope to flood my chest—that he’s not about to cut this thing off. That he's not going to verbally slash my heart into tatters. That he’s not going to physically slam me against the wall for all the lines I’ve pushed today.

“A list,” he eventually continues, apparently not noticing my inner turmoil. “Of, er. Of things we can and can’t do. While we’re dating.”

“Pretend dating,” I say automatically, like the air hasn’t been pushed out of my lungs.

“Right,” he says, grinning, like he didn’t just refer to us as _dating_ without any qualifiers. Crowley. Merlin. _Fuck_. “Pretend dating. Just feel like we need some ground rules, you know?”

I nod my head; I don’t trust my mouth at the moment.

He hasn't brought me here to get mad at me for anything I did today.

He's brought me here to create a bloody list.

“Right,” he says again before stepping back and going to sit down. He places the page on the desk and immediately sets to writing. Before I can gather myself enough to ask him what he’s already assigned as our first rule, he says, “Well, obviously, the first rule is no snogging, like you said the other night.”

I feel unwell again. Is he going to mention everything that happened? Is he going to say, “ _You seemed to need a refresher on that rule earlier!_ ” Is he going to shame me for how close I got to kissing him?

But he doesn’t do any of that. He looks over at me for a few seconds, twitches the corner of his mouth up, and then turns back to his desk.

He gets through a couple more rules—what they are, I haven’t the slightest clue, because he doesn’t say them aloud this time—before I finally shake myself free of my spot at the door. I stride over next to him and read it all over his shoulder:

_Rule One: No snogging. At all. For any reason._

_Rule Two: If Agatha figures it out, we have to come clean. (I think that’s only fair, right?)_

_Rule Three: Pet names are okay. (Just let me know if there are any you don't want to be called. I've no preferences.)_

I get hung up on the third rule for longer than I should, honestly, but how can I not when I've been assuming all day that pet names were going to be off the table? _He's okay with pet names. He's okay with when I called him one earlier_. I feel like half of a very heavy weight has dropped away from my chest. And he's made a little note in case I care about which ones we use.

None of these rules focus on the main issue from this morning, though.

“Rule four,” I say before I can convince myself not to, and I pretend that my voice isn’t shaking while I do it, “should be that I can help you whenever you start to go off.”

Simon turns his neck and looks up at me again. His eyes are blown wide open, and his bottom lip drops so that his mouth looks the same way. I see the tips of his ears and most of his cheeks begin to burn again, and I thank magic that I didn’t drain any rats while I was hiding from him earlier, because I think that my face would look the same way if I had.

“Really?” he breathes. “You’d do that again? You’d—you’d stop me again?”

The notion of someone stopping him from going off…I think this is the first time he’s actually had somebody who could make it come true. I think this is the first time anyone’s _offered_ to be in the blast zone voluntarily. He’s staring at me like it is—like I’ve just offered him something he never even considered I would.

I wish I’d tried to stop him from going off sooner.

“Snow,” I whisper, not taking my eyes away from his, “ _yes_. I would be happy to help you again. If you’d let me.”

“I’d like that, I think,” he whispers back, and he’s not taking his eyes away from mine either, not even to write rule four down onto the list. (I could lose myself here, in his gaze.) (I think I already have.)

I’m thinking about doing something stupid again when Bunce comes barreling into our room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter was not supposed to exist. this is not at all what i thought i would be writing. i thought the counter spell class was going to be something mentioned in passing. simon and baz had other ideas, apparently. the next chapter WILL go where i want it to!! i will fight this fic if i have to! all the chapters afterwards depend on the next chapter going exactly where i need it to go. please send help so that this actually happens.


	5. Exactly What It's Always Been

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Penny wants to know what's going on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for penny being a kind of bad friend. she does good friend things and bad friend things, so like, just a heads up. also, we're gonna pretend that i didn't forget lunch exists for penny and agatha in chapter 3. and that i didn't think teatime was at like......1 or 2 PM. my bad, y'all. also there is oddly a lot of focus on eyes in this chapter. don't know how that happened but uh. yeah.

**PENNY**

I really don’t want to let Baz know that I can get into Mummers, but I don’t feel like I have a _choice_.

Simon wasn’t at tea. He wasn’t even at _lunch_ , and I only found _that_ out because of Baz’s unfortunate cousin, Dev. He sat down next to me in our last class of the day, which was already strange since he’s usually cornered away with that other boy, Niall, away from everybody else, and then he made it even stranger when he slid me a note at the beginning of the lecture. The paper read, _Where is Baz??_ As if I would know.

I told him as such. _I don’t know_ , I wrote. I thought about leaving it at that, but Dev’s question made me realize that I hadn’t seen Simon in a while (and that Simon stays stuck to Baz like glue sometimes), so I added, _Where’s Simon?_ before pushing the note back his way. He looked at me with his eyebrows scrunching his forehead into about half a dozen different wrinkles and wrote back, _Idk either. Neither of them were at lunch_.

I just about lost it then.

I had a good reason for not being at lunch: I had a phone call scheduled with Micah (he hasn’t had a lot of free time lately, and neither have I; I think the last time we were in a call was a month ago), and I was not about to fight with all of the noise in the cafeteria, so I went back to my room and talked to him there. I’d told Simon and Agatha a week ago that I wouldn’t be at lunch today, and Agatha had made plans to go off and hang out with some of the other girls in our year because she, in her words, “didn’t know when else she’d have any scheduled time to be away from us and our endless demented missions,” and Simon was too busy staring at Baz to formulate any kind of response with any meaning.

But Simon never misses lunch. _Never_. And if he did skip lunch today (which can’t be verified since the information is coming from Dev, but he seemed pretty concerned about it all, so I’m inclined to believe him), then he _absolutely_ should have been at tea; he should have been throwing scones and butter down his throat like he was a bloody vacuum. “ _Missed lunch_ ,” he should have said with his mouth more than full. “ _Baz was plotting._ ” That’s what should have happened.

And then Agatha told me about Baz keeping Simon from going off, and I just…

I need to see Simon. Right. Now. So barging into their room and showing Baz that I can get into Mummers is my only option, because I’m pretty sure that’s where they are.

I prepare myself for the worst as I walk up to their room. Baz has never been able to spell Simon before, not in a way that matters. Sure, he can cast a **Stand your ground** or a **Break even** on him, but Simon’s made of so much magic that that sort of thing only lasts for so long. If Baz has actually managed to use a spell on Simon to lull him into complacency, then there’s no telling how strong his magic is now—or what he’ll be able to cast on me.

I reach the top of the stairs, take a deep breath, and push.

When I open their door, I don’t expect to see Baz standing over Simon’s shoulder while Simon sits at his desk, both of them looking like I’ve wandered into some sort of domestic scene. I’m not entirely sure what I _expected_ to see—maybe Simon shoving Baz into a wall and threatening him with his sword for messing with his magic earlier. Maybe Baz punching Simon in the face and trying to siphon his magic from him. Maybe Simon gazing adoringly into Baz’s eyes and Baz smiling like a villain before killing him. (Love spells are considered bad for a reason.)

This is not what I thought I’d be walking into, but that doesn’t mean that Simon isn’t in trouble.

“Penny?” Simon asks while Baz takes my intrusion as a chance to jump a few steps back from him, as he should. (Baz should never be that close to Si. It makes me feel weird. And like Simon’s in danger.) “What are you doing here?”

“Checking on you,” I say, stalking forward until I’m in Simon’s space. He pushes his chair back, and I grab his face in my hands to look at it. He lets me, but I don’t think I’ve given him much of a choice.

“Bunce, how nice of you to break into our room,” I hear Baz say dryly, but I’m busy not listening to him.

Simon’s eyes don’t _look_ like he’s been magicked—they’re still his same deep blue, and I don’t see any other dots of color circling in his irises. There’s no glassy sheen over them either, I don’t think. His pupils look fine too, maybe a little dilated, but not like Baz has filled him with some kind of outrageous lust that would make them look blown out. When I look over his face as a whole, I see that he’s flushed in the cheeks a bit and on the tops of his ears…but he always looks a little rosy whenever Baz is around. I think it’s because he’s always _angry_ when Baz is around.

He doesn’t seem angry right now, though. “Are you feeling okay?” I ask, moving my gaze to the rest of Simon’s body. There’s nothing out of place that I can _see_ , but that just makes me worry more. “Do you feel funny? Like you’re being forced to do stuff you wouldn’t normally do?”

“No?” Simon says, looking confused. “I feel fine, Pen.” Then, like he’s suddenly gone shy: “A little hungry.”

“Of course,” Baz says with a roll of the eyes. Like they’re friends. Like this stupid relationship is real. Like he hasn’t spelled Simon silly.

I scowl at them both before asking Simon, “Why weren’t you at lunch?”

Simon flicks his eyes over to Baz, who at my question has taken to staring at Simon like he’s grown a second head.

“You weren’t at lunch?” He sounds…breathless, almost. I don’t appreciate it.

“No,” I say before Simon can answer. Baz’s eyes eventually come to me, but not fast enough for my comfort. “He wasn’t. And I heard that _you_ weren’t at lunch either, Pitch. Care to explain?”

“I was…” He looks between me and Simon, settles on staring at Simon again, and says softly, “I was in the Catacombs.”

Oh.

His mom’s grave is down there. (That’s where you go if you die at Watford.) (It’s where Baz will go if I kill him for spelling my best friend.) I guess he wanted to go see her.

That doesn’t explain why _Simon_ wasn’t at lunch, though.

Simon pulls himself out of my grip and up from the chair, smiles, and shouts, “I knew it! I knew you were in there!”

“Did you follow me?” Baz asks.

Simon’s flush deepens, and his smile becomes smaller. Shyer. “I was looking for you. Couldn’t find you.”

“Is that why I felt your magic get stronger for a minute?”

“Yeah. Was outside. Didn’t go in.” At Baz’s lack of a reply, Simon continues. “I wasn’t sure I was right. That you were in there. Or that you wanted to see me. If you were.”

Since when has Simon _cared_ about whether or not Baz wants to see him?

Normally, Simon makes sure he’s in Baz’s space, whether or not Baz appears to be enjoying it. Baz could spit, and Simon would be close enough for it to land on his cheek. He’s always close to him—pinning him with his sword, or screaming into his face, or knocking his chin with his fist.

 _Or that you wanted to see me. If you were_.

There’s no way they are _actually_ boyfriends. No. I refuse to believe this. Even if Simon is suddenly acting considerate about Baz’s space.

Baz must have spelled him, just like I told Agatha.

I just can’t see what spell it is right now.

“Snow,” Baz says, like his throat has started to close up some, “you should have told me you didn’t eat. We could have gone to tea.”

Simon shrugs. “You wanted to talk here.”

Baz looks at Simon like he’s something to devour; it's the same look Simon gives to every food product Watford ever serves. Everything is silent for a few seconds, and I can practically taste the tension in this room getting stronger. Simon and Baz are eyeing each other all over. When Baz finally starts for Simon, I think that he’s going to attack him; I stop him with a glare.

“ _No,_ ” I seethe. I walk towards Baz. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this angry before; I don’t think anyone has made me want to pull a Simon and go off, but right now, that’s all I want to do to Baz. Just explode my magic all over him and hope it hurts when it hits. I nudge him backwards until the back of his legs hits the foot of Simon’s bed. Before he can say anything else, I flatten my ring hand against his chest and say, “ **Stay where you are!** ” instead of any of the other, more painful spells that I have lurking in the back of my mind. (I don’t need to put my hand on him for the spell to work. But it feels more powerful this way.)

“ _Penny_ ,” I hear Simon say behind me. I feel a warm hand land on my shoulder, but I don’t pay much attention to it. When Simon speaks again, it’s right above me; I feel his breath on the top of my head. “Penny, what are you doing?”

“Getting answers,” I say, not taking my eyes off of Baz. He hasn’t attempted to cast anything to undo my spell, and it’s a good thing, that. It keeps me from having to cast something else. He also doesn’t appear too bothered by me spelling him still, which I don’t know if I should take as proof that he _hasn’t_ magicked Simon or proof that he _has_.

Baz juts his chin out and stares at me down his nose, and the anger flares again in my chest.

“Penny—” Simon says again, but I wave my free hand to shush him, and he stops.

“Baz,” I say slowly, because I’m giving him time to carefully think about the words he wants to say next, “did you cast a spell on Simon to make him date you?”

“No,” he automatically says through clenched teeth. I narrow my eyes. “I would never.”

“Are you lying to me?”

He turns one of his famous sneers on me (I see why they piss off Simon so much) and says, “No. Do you want to cast a truth spell to make sure, Bunce?” I have a feeling that if he could move, he’d be circling me like a shark. As it is, he just continues talking. “How about **Barefaced liar**? Maybe **The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth**? You better spell my memory away afterwards, though—wouldn’t want me telling the Mage and tarnishing your reputation.”

He is _so_ not in a position to be threatening me. _I’m_ the one with a magical instrument over somebody’s heart.

“I don’t need to illegally spell the truth from you. Because if you lie to me about hurting Simon,” I say as I lean in so close that my chin practically rests on his shirt, “you’ll be on the receiving end of spells much worse.”

It’s a statement to Baz’s intelligence that he doesn’t scoff or say anything else. I move back a half step.

“Good,” I say, keeping my fingers pressed into his chest for another few seconds before pulling away completely. Then I turn to Simon. He’s staring at us with wide eyes and has his arms out like he’s surrendering.

“Penny, we’re all right,” he says, but I cast **Needle in a haystack** over him anyway while thinking of all the love spells I can. Nothing happens, so I run through the list of the love spells again and cast **Every nook and cranny** instead.

Nothing happens.

“Are you searching for a _spell_ , Bunce?” The way Baz says it is like he _wants_ me to look over at him, so I very pointedly don’t. I just give Simon another once-over. And then another. Just to make sure his eyes are still the same color and his pupils are still there and that there’s actually no signs of a spell dripping off him.

“ _Yes_. **Search and rescue**.”

There’s still no signs. Nothing changed after any of my spells.

“Nobody needs rescuing, Bunce. And I already told you that I didn’t cast a spell on him.”

Simon still looks just like Simon.

“And I don’t believe you.”

The expression on Simon’s face softens a little, and he brings his hands back down. “Pen,” he says, gently, like I’m made of glass or something, “he didn’t spell me.”

I look over Simon again, one more time.

There’s no evidence of a spell.

He steps a little closer and appears to want to say something else to me, but before he can, I catch a glimpse of something white sitting atop the brown of his desk and push past him to see what it is.

This must be whatever they were doing when I first came in here! I can’t believe I didn’t think to look at this when I first arrived.

The words on the page don’t make any sense to me as I begin reading.

_Rule One: No snogging. At all. For any reason._

_Rule Two: If Agatha figures it out, we have to come clean. (I think that’s only fair, right?)_

There’s another rule written down, but I don’t bother reading it because the first two words of it are _Pet_ _names_ , and I don’t think I can handle that one right now _._ I think I’m barely handling the first two rules as is.

I slowly turn back to Simon and bring the paper level with my head. “What,” I ground out slowly, shaking the page once for emphasis, “is _this_?”

Simon swallows, and I watch Baz watch his throat bob up and down.

“Um,” Simon says, hand reaching up to pull at his curls. “Uh.”

“It’s nothing,” Baz says too quickly, staring at the page like he wants to set it alight from across the room. I think he would have already done so if he were able to move.

“Um,” Simon tries again. The hand in his hair is wrapped around the strands tighter now, almost like he’s trying to tug his hair out. I want to tell him to stop, but I don’t. “Nothing. It’s—it’s nothing.”

**SIMON**

Shit.

I shouldn’t have made a list. That was stupid. That was—that was dumb.

But Baz didn’t say it was dumb. Baz seemed to like the idea, actually. Before Penny came in here, he even came up with another rule to add to the list. One about how he would help me again if I started going off…

It’s weird, but I feel my face heat up at the thought of Baz helping me again.

No one has ever been able to keep me from going off before. And they’ve _tried_. There was that time third year that the Mage kept casting **Bring to a boil** on me to get me to constantly go off so he could try out different spells right before I’d lose it. (It didn’t work very well. I went off a lot that day, and none of his spells touched me. By the time we were through, I think I’d collapsed on the grass about a dozen times.) And I know that Penny’s tried everything she can think of. Talking to me while I’m getting worked up; casting different spells to try and contain me when that doesn’t work. Having me meditate. Changing my wand to something else to see if there was something I could cast better with. (If my magic is bad with my wand, it’s _horrible_ with anything else. I felt like I couldn’t get my magic out of me fast enough, and I normally feel like that anyway, yeah, but this was worse.)

Agatha’s tried to talk me down too, but I don’t like when she sees me going off. I think it just sets me off more when I know that she sees me all riled up. When I know that she’s looking at me with that pitying look she gives me a lot. It makes me feel…

Well, it makes me feel _bad_. And like I don’t deserve to be around her.

It doesn’t help that Baz has always been good at making me feel that way regardless. A lot of the time, he makes me feel like I don’t even deserve to be at _Watford_. And he’s great at making me go off; he’s never tried to talk me down before. Not until today, that is.

Which I guess is what a boyfriend would do. Right? And that’s probably the only reason he did it. So he could pass off as my boyfriend better. I don’t think it would look very good if I started to go off and everyone heard Baz say, “ _Merlin, Snow, you’d think you’d have mastered it already, being the Chosen One and all. No matter. Go on now. Blow up. Do what you always do._ ” That probably wouldn’t sell our story.

I look over at him without meaning to. He’s still been spelled frozen by Penny, but his eyes find mine. He looks just about done with Penny. And worried, I think, for me.

They look nice today. His eyes. (They look nice every day because he’s Baz and he’s a perfect wanker, but today there’s just something…extra nice, I guess.)

My face heats up again.

**PENNY**

Simon looks like he might be in the middle of deciding between throwing himself at Baz or having an aneurysm, so I know that he’s lying when he says that this page is “nothing.”

And he’s blushing. Like, a lot. Like, more than he was blushing when I first came into their room. I don’t like it—because that’s usually the way he blushes when he’s looking at Agatha, and Agatha isn’t in this room because it’s just me, Simon, and Baz, and I _know_ that he’s not blushing like that for me.

I suddenly really don’t want Simon throwing himself on Baz.

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “No, I don’t believe that. What is this?”

“Bunce,” Baz says with force, and I’m not looking at him, but I’m pretty sure he hasn’t taken his eyes off of Simon, judging by how intensely Simon is still not looking at me, “it is _nothing_ , just like Snow said. Drop it.”

I whirl on Baz. (And I’m _right_. He wasn’t looking at me. I watch his eyes pull off of Simon to refocus on me.) “Fine. Then answer this question: what _is_ your relationship with Simon?” I ask, glaring harder now. “‘ _If Agatha figures it out’_? What does _that_ mean?”

 _And why is he blushing like that?_ I want to ask. _Why is he looking at you like he usually looks at Agatha? What the fuck is going on?_

I feel like I’m being tricked. Like the answer is right in front of me and I’m just not finding it. One of these boys is going to tell me what’s going on. _If Agatha figures it out_? If Agatha figures _what_ out? Who writes a list of rules for their relationship? And what does Agatha have to do for this relationship to end?

No one answers me, so I ask again, more forcefully this time, “Baz, _what_ is your relationship with Simon?”

“Penny, just drop it,” I hear Simon say, but I’ve still got my eyes trained on Baz, waiting for an answer. He won’t give me a response; he’s just looking over at Simon, _again_ , like he hasn’t already done it enough. “Don’t—don’t worry about it. It’s nothing.”

I still don’t believe him. I cut my eyes towards Si. “I don’t believe you, Simon.” Then I look back at Baz. “That’s why I’m asking him.”

“Penny, please,” Simon says, but I ignore it.

“Baz,” I repeat, moving close again. “What is your relationship with Simon? And what does this paper have to do with it?”

The answers to my questions this morning. The scene Agatha told me about. Simon not being at lunch. Baz not being at lunch either. Simon not showing at tea; Baz not showing at tea _either_. Finding them huddled together over a list of rules.

Simon looking like a bloody _rose_ in bloom.

“Penny, just _drop it_ ,” I hear Simon say again, sounding strained, but I’ve stopped listening. I’m going to get Baz to tell me what it is if it kills me.

“It is exactly what it’s always been,” Baz finally snarls. I can feel him trying to fight the spell I used to keep him from moving, but it’s not working. “And it is _none of your business_.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

It doesn’t make _sense_.

Someone is going to make it all make sense.

“What is your relationship with Simon?” I ask for the fourth time, eyes narrowed solely on Baz’s face. I’m looking for anything that can clue me in to this, anything that can explain away everything that’s happened today. A hair out of place. A twitch of the lips. A flash in his eyes.

Simon doesn’t just not show at lunch. He doesn’t just ditch us at tea. Simon Snow skipping a meal, voluntarily—it’s ludicrous. Even when he’s staying on Baz’s heels, he always makes time to scarf something down. But today he didn’t. It reeks of Baz. I just don’t know _how_.

“Is it fake?” I ask, thinking of the rules. Real people dating don’t have a list of rules, especially not ones with qualifiers about if someone “figures it out.” And the snogging rule is a whole other thing.

I know that Simon makes lists a lot, but even he wouldn’t make one like this with someone he was truly dating. Simon doesn’t plan things like this—he doesn’t make lists because he’s _thinking ahead_ ; he makes lists because it makes things make more sense in his brain. (He made a list of the things he needed to bring to each class one year. It was basically the same stuff for each class, but he would get the textbooks confused. Almost all of his books that year began with _Magickal_. Once he had this list in his head made that he told me about, he stopped showing up with the wrong stuff.)

But…

Baz doesn’t talk Simon out of going off; he sits by and watches as it happens. He _causes_ it to happen most of the time. He’s not dated anybody the entire time he’s been at Watford, and I know he’s had offers. No one walks around with that air of self-confidence and that smooth complexion without attracting _someone_. He only hangs out with Dev and Niall, and he’s just like Simon—he doesn’t miss a mealtime either, although I never see him eat much.

Those are the times Simon and Baz stare at each other the most.

I think the words that I’ve been dreading. But they feel…

They feel like they might be right. Partly.

Then I say them: “Or is it real?”

**SIMON**

I think I’m about to go off. Penny won't stop asking what mine and Baz's relationship is, and I don't want to tell her the truth, but I don't want to lie to her, and everything would just be so much easier if she would just lay off. I can feel my magic crawling on my skin and escaping out of my pores. And then Penny asks another question, and I feel all of my magic just kind to speed up.

_Is it real?_

_Is it real?_

_Is it real?_

**PENNY**

“ _Bunce_ ,” Baz says with feeling, only sparing a glance back my way. “It doesn’t matter.” His gaze shifts to this desperate thing as soon as it’s on Simon again. Then he says in a softer voice, “Snow, hey, it’s alright. You’re okay.”

I go to look at Simon, but it’s suddenly really difficult. Everything is starting to go a little fuzzy, like I’m trying to stare at Simon through a fog that’s just rolled in, and I blink, but it doesn’t go away. I sniff the air a second too late and—smoke, enough that I feel almost choked by it the moment I notice it.

Oh, Nicks and Slicks.

“Are you about to go off?” I ask, even though I know the answer. I let the paper of rules fall to the floor and rush forward, grabbing Simon by both of his wrists and pulling on them until his hands are in the space between us.

“Simon,” I say, trying to catch his eyes. But I can’t. He’s not looking at me; he’s not looking at anything. The smoke gets harder to breathe around.

He’s about to go off, here, in this room.

“ _Simon_ ,” I say, harder, squeezing his wrists a little too tightly. “Simon, hey, listen to me!”

His pupils are shrinking, and I can taste so much of his magic in the air, invading my mouth—he’s almost there. I can feel his magic building and bubbling around him; we’re almost to the part where the magic starts tumbling off him in waves. “I’m sorry, Pen,” I think I hear him say, but his voice feels really far away.

I look over at Baz as best as I can and shout, “What did you do?”

He seems personally offended by the question and sneers at me again. “I didn’t do _this_. This was _you_.”

“Not now!” I take a moment to cough into my shoulder before continuing. “Earlier! When you made him stop going off! What did you do to make him stop?”

“I-I don’t know,” he says. I’ve never heard Baz Pitch stammer in my life—I file that information away to examine later. When we’re not all about to get blasted by Simon’s magic.

“Well, remember!”

He looks around the room frantically for a few seconds before finally looking back at me and yelling, “Grab his face!”

“ _What_?”

“Grab his _face_ , Bunce!” he says again. “Take your hands off his wrists and cup them on either side of his face!”

I do as I’m told, but it doesn’t seem like it’s helping. Simon is still being Simon. I still feel like I’m about to get blown to pieces standing this close to him. It’s all starting to make my eyes sting. “Simon?” I say, looking at how my fingers stand out against his skin. It’s the only thing I can really manage to see—it’s the only way I know I’ve really found him through this haze. “Simon, please, you’ve got this. **Simmer down**. Control it, Simon. **Cool it**. Find the edges of it. Pull it back inside of yourself.”

It doesn’t do anything.

Not that it ever does.

**BAZ**

Penny is wasting fucking time.

I need her to unspell me so I can go to Simon. I need to do something—I need to stop him. I should be the one there, holding onto him, not that it would do much good at this point. I think our safest bet when he’s this far gone is to find cover and hope he remembers that we’re not his enemies. (Is that what we are now? Not enemies?)

I still want to try to bring him back, though.

“Bunce,” I shout, “unspell me!”

I think that she can sense that she isn’t cooling Simon down any because in the next second, I’m able to move again. I shoot to Simon instantly and knock Bunce out of the way as gently as I can, my hands touching the places where hers just were.

“Get away from here,” I say, “because this might not work.”

She shakes her head and says, “No. I’m not leaving him.”

“Then get behind something.”

She heads behind me somewhere, probably to hide under Simon’s desk, but I don’t pay attention to her because I’m not worried about her.

I’m worried about Simon.

I turn my full attention back to Simon and try to hold his gaze, but it’s really hard with him this far gone. His eyes are holes of blue in his face, his pupils in pinpoints I can hardly even make out. We’re right there, at his breaking point, and his skin is _hot_ —I feel like I’m holding my hands up against the sun. My palms feel a little like I’ve set them on a hot stove, but I ignore it as best I can.

“Simon,” I say, loud enough that I hope he can hear me, “it’s okay. I’m right here.”

And then it happens.

I see his eyes look around frantically before finding me, and I make sure to stare right back at him. The smoke around us swells for a second, but then it gets a tad bit easier to breathe; the heat stroking my palms cools down a little bit too.

It’s working again.

“ _Simon_ ,” I say again, hands still pressed against the sides of his face. I press his cheeks a little harder, just enough that when his eyes start trying to roam again, they stop and settle back on me. “Hey. Breathe, just like we did earlier. In through your nose, out through your mouth.”

I do a breath, and I wait a few seconds before he does one too. I can make out more of his face now, and his pupils are starting to grow a little bit. I can actually see some of the black standing out against the blue.

“Baz,” I hear him whisper, like he’s scared. The smoke thickens again.

Before I think better of it, I pull my hands away from his face and move them so I’m pulling him against me by his neck and shoulders instead. For a moment, I contemplate kissing him—just bringing his lips to mine and seeing what happens, seeing if it settles his magic out or if it causes it to fully devour us—but I move his face to my collar instead and wrap my arms around him while I shove my face into his curls.

“It’s okay,” I whisper into his hair, breathing him in. “It’s okay, Simon.”

I don’t think I’d care, if he blew us both up right now. I think I would just be happy that I’d gotten to hold him for a little bit. That I’d gotten the chance to bury my face in his curls and have him flush against me again.

I don’t _want_ him to go off. But if he’s going to do it, then I’m alright being this close to him while he does it. So what if it kills me? I’m not letting him go.

I feel his breath hit the exposed skin of my throat when he breathes out, and then I feel his arms circle around my waist. He breathes me in, and if I wasn’t watching it happen, I wouldn’t have believed it if he’d told me that his magic got a little less dense when he did.

The longer he stays against me, breathing against my neck, the less intense his magic gets.

Eventually, it settles out almost completely. I can still smell the smoke everywhere—I think I’ll be smelling it forever, on all of our stuff—but when I push Simon’s face back a little bit and look into his eyes, they’re back to normal.

I smile down at him. “Hey, Snow.”

His eyebrows crease. “None of that.” Then, before I can say anything snarky: “I like Simon a lot better. Please call me Simon.”

I’m feeling very soft, apparently, because I nod my head and say, “Hey, Simon.”

Then I hear Bunce moving out from where she hid during all of this, and the moment is over, and I feel like lighting someone on fire.

I push Simon back and whirl around on Penelope, blocking Simon with my body.

“Get out,” I say through gritted teeth. “Get out of our room, and don’t come back.”

She sends me a tired look and tries to move around me, saying, “Simon—”

“ _No_ ,” I cut her off. “You don’t get to do that. Leave us.”

“I’m his best friend—”

“His best friend who wouldn’t listen to him when he told you not to worry about what we are!” I shout, still standing in front of Simon so Bunce can’t get to him. I am not letting her anywhere _near_ him. Not right now. Not after all of that. “Who pushed him until he started going off!”

“That wasn’t my fault—”

“By Crowley, _yes, it was_.”

She looks behind me. “Simon, come on. Say something.”

I look back at him over my shoulder and see that he’s not looking at either of us. Instead, he’s focusing on something on the floor—when I look, I see that it’s our page of rules, looking mildly shredded. An effect of his magic, I’m assuming, unless Bunce is petty enough to have torn the page apart.

I look at him again. “Simon,” I try, softly, “what do you want her to do?”

His eyes slowly come up to me, and he looks… _rough_. He looks tired, like all the energy has been sapped out of him. I guess it has been.

Then he turns to Penelope and surprises me by saying, “Leave, Penny.”

She looks hurt. Good. “Simon, you know I didn’t mean—”

“ _Leave_ ,” I say, snarling. “He told you to leave. Do it before I make you.”

She looks like she really wants to say something else, but then she sees my face and Simon’s face, and she thinks better of it and nods her head once before heading for the stairs.

I would feel bad, but Simon himself told her to leave. Clearly, I was right when I told her to go. I think this is one of the only things we've ever agreed on.

I shut the door behind her almost as soon as she’s over the threshold, and then I look over at Simon, who is standing dejectedly in the center of our room. He looks worse than he normally does after he starts to go off; it makes my chest hurt.

“What can I do?” I ask, still with one hand on the doorknob. If he needs food, I’ll go get it. He _skipped lunch_ for me; I know he’s hungry. (I still can’t believe it. He skipped food to search for me. And then he skipped food _again_ so we could talk. My idiotic heart can't take much more of this.) “I can go to the cafeteria and gather something for you.”

He turns his face towards me slowly and shakes his head. Then he opens his arms up and says, so softly I don’t even know if he wants me to hear it, “Can we just hug again?”

I cross the room and wrap myself around him without another word, and I let him cry into me.

Simon cries awake exactly like he cries when he’s asleep. It’s this thick and angry thing—his fingers fist into my uniform just like they always dig into his sheets, and he makes the same noises he makes at night that absolutely tear my heart into tatters. I know he doesn’t like to cry (I’ve only managed to make him cry a couple of times, and both times, he seemed angrier at himself for crying than he did at me for sending him to that point), and it feels like I’ve stumbled into an alternate timeline where Simon can cry and I can comfort him instead of pretend I don’t notice.

“I didn’t want anything to happen to you or Penny,” he cries into my shoulder. “I thought I was going to hurt you both.”

“I know, love,” I say, the word slipping out before I can stop it. My arms stiffen around him, and I expect him to shove me away, to be mad at me for doing that right now when there’s no one around us to try and convince, but he shuffles us even closer. I don't question it.

After a while of us just holding onto each other, he sniffles and moves back enough to look up at me. He looks a bit bashful when he says, “Do you think we could eat something now?”

I step out of his arms, grab his hand, and head for the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter went....places. some of the places were planned. some of them were not. the skeleton of my outline is in here, yelling at me. there may actually be 13 chapters instead of 12, but i haven't decided yet. who knows. StarOrgana seems to think we'll somehow wind up with AT LEAST 15 chapters.


	6. On The Cheek

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Simon talks himself down in the Wavering Wood. A rule is almost broken. Could I interest you in some Dev and Niall during these trying times?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here, have another episode of "i don't know how to make chapters flow and also i've basically thrown my outline into the metaphorical garbage because like 91% of this chapter was not planned." had to split this chapter up because it was getting kind of long for this fic.  
> also, this chapter is a jump forward by like a week. i made that clear in the text, but just in case, to avoid confusion, here's me saying it now.

**SIMON**

It’s not real. This thing with Baz, I mean.

I _know_ that. I do. I’m the one who came up with the bloody idea of us fake dating—I know that we’re not _actually_ dating. That this is just a thing we’re doing so that Agatha and I can get together later. I don’t need anybody to tell me that we’re not a legit couple.

The thought of being coupled up with _anybody_ , whether that’s Baz or Agatha or someone else, makes me feel strange. (I don’t think a lot of people would call me a catch. I can’t control my magic, I’m pretty rubbish at school, I’m always fighting the Humdrum…I don’t know if anyone looks at me and thinks I’d make a swell boyfriend.) But the thought of Baz and I dating, it makes my stomach feel too full, like I’ve eaten too much and I’m about to spoil someone’s shoes if I don’t stop. I don’t know what that means because it’s not the same way I feel when I think about me and Agatha dating. When I think of Agatha being with me, it’s like the center of my chest gets hot—it’s like I see her, and everything just kind of…stings a little. I don’t know if that’s how you’re _supposed_ to feel; that’s why I try not to think about it.

So I don’t know why Penny asking if Baz and I were fake or real set me off the other day like it did. We’re _not_ together—that’s a question I know the answer to. But I couldn’t get it out when she asked Baz if we were a real couple. I just stood there. And started to blow up.

I don’t know why I couldn’t just tell her the truth. Why I didn’t say, “ _No, Pen, it’s not real. You’re so smart. Help us figure out the rest of our rules._ ” Or, “ _Exactly. Not real. Because I like Agatha still. Yes. I like Agatha, and this thing with Baz is fake. Help._ ” The words just got stuck.

But, even if it’s not real…

Well, it’s been nice, hasn’t it? Nicer than whatever we had going on before, at least. We haven’t fought since this started (I know it’s only been a week, but this is probably the longest we’ve ever gone between fights, if you don’t count school breaks), and he keeps being nice to me, and he’s stopped me from going off _four times_ already, and two of those times were on the same day.

The fourth time was yesterday, and it wasn’t even that big a deal. I was trying to do homework, and I got so frustrated that I started spilling my magic all over the place. Baz was by my side and holding onto my shoulder in two seconds and made me get up and pace the room while he looked over my work. Then he helped me finish it up once my magic was tucked back in. (I didn’t realize homework help would be included in this fake dating thing. If I’d known that, I might have suggested we do this sooner.) (I’m not even sure I’m kidding when I say that. Baz is great at school, and he’s more patient with me than Penny is.)

The third time was the bigger issue. It was two days after Penny had come into our room, and she was trying to talk to me between classes, and I still didn’t want to talk to _her_ , but she wouldn’t leave me well enough alone. (Something about it being long enough for me to have seen that she was only trying to help.) I started freaking out, and I thought I was about to go off—but Baz found me and grabbed my arm and forced me into an empty classroom and blocked the door so Penny couldn’t follow.

He told me what he’s been telling me since that afternoon in our room: that it wasn’t my fault and that Penny shouldn’t have kept pushing me like she did. That she should have been a better friend and listened and paid a little more attention to what her words were doing to me. (He keeps telling me these things, every time we see each other. Sometimes, they make me feel bad. Like _I’m_ the bad friend, even though Baz keeps trying to explain that I’m not.) (I guess I’m just not used to Penny being so…ruthless. With me, anyway.) (It’s different when you’re watching her turn it on someone else.)

Anyway, he calmed me down. My magic felt decently contained. And Baz’s face was as pink as I’ve ever seen it—I guess because he was so angry at Penny, even though I never asked him to be. He has his own reasons to be mad at her, though, so it makes sense; she _did_ spell him immobile and assume that he had cast some sort of spell on me. He told me we needed to get going, and I didn’t argue when he walked me to my next lesson.

After the next class, though, Penny found me again, and Baz was on another floor. I don’t remember what happened, exactly, except that Penny was arguing with me until I blinked out. When I woke up, Baz was leaning over me, and I was in my bed. “ _Crowley, Snow_ ,” he said. “ _Thank magic you’re awake. You made everybody completely mute for several hours. Couldn’t cast a single spell. I don’t know what you said while you were going off, but Bunce didn’t seem too happy about it from the look on her face._ ”

“ _I probably told her to fuck off_ ,” I said.

And then he _laughed_.

He’s never laughed around me before. Well, never genuinely. The only laugh I ever hear from him is this really short, mean thing that’s usually aimed at me when I’m being stupid. It makes my muscles tense and my magic a little harder to hold onto, which I think is the whole reason he does it.

This laugh wasn’t that.

When he laughed this time, it was the kind of laugh that I only see when Dev or Niall make him do it. I’ve never actually heard it before. Just caught glimpses of it from across the cafeteria and tried to imagine the sound. It started in his stomach and then spilled out of his mouth before he could stop it, and it sounded really pretty, just like I knew it would. I think the look on my face was weird afterwards because he asked me if I was okay.

“ _I like your laugh_ ,” I said without meaning to. Then I clamped my mouth shut and tried to look anywhere that wasn’t him.

“… _Thank you,_ ” he whispered back. His voice sounded like he needed to clear his throat. “ _I like yours too_.”

I stood up, refused to look at him, and said I was going to go to the Wavering Wood to practice my sword technique.

And now, here I am. With the Sword of Mages in my hands, making swipes at a tree close to the edge, and hoping that a dryad doesn’t come out and tell me to stop, because I really don’t want to. I’ve been out here for an hour already, and I don’t feel any better. I still feel wound up. Like I’m one of those toys with the strings on their back and someone keeps pulling it.

I think about Baz’s laugh again, and it makes my next swing hit so hard that a slice of bark goes flying off the tree and skittering into the grass. I’m not sure why, but my magic starts moving faster under my skin too; I can feel it starting to dart across my body. I keep swinging at the tree, hoping that getting out some energy will do the trick, but I can still feel my magic building even after about another five minutes have passed.

I try thinking of something else to calm me down, but the only thing my mind goes to is Penny and thinking about her is really not helping me chill out. In fact, thinking about her only makes my magic flare more, and I feel it start licking out at my sword from my fingertips.

So I go back to thinking about Baz. Not about his laugh this time—just about what he does that pulls my magic back in. Maybe I can do it by myself. It seems like all he really does is talk to me, right? Sometimes he touches my face too…but he’s not here right now, so I guess I’ll have to do that part myself. Can’t do anything about not being able to smell him, but I’m in the woods, so the smell here should be close enough. (His posh soap always makes him smell like the woods, but nicer.) (Why buy soap that makes you smell like you just took a shower outside? What’s the point?)

My magic is starting to spark off of me and the sword now—literally, the sparks such a bright orange that I kind of think something’s going to catch fire—so I gently lay it down on the forest floor beneath me (I’m sure it won’t mind) and hope it doesn’t burn anything. I straighten and bring a hand up to cup the side of my face—then I shut my eyes and try to think of Baz.

Of how he looked when he held me in the middle of our room while I was going off.

(His grey eyes were burning into me. Like I was the only thing worth looking at in that moment. Not my magic whipping out around us and filling the room like a red smoke— _me_ , standing in the worst of it all, with him.)

Of how, when he holds my face, his hands cover my cheeks and his fingertips rest on my ears.

(No one ever holds my face like that. Whenever Penny holds my face, she’s usually pinching in my cheeks and resting her thumbs under my jaw. And the closest the Mage has ever come was that time when he patted my cheek after I took down a wild werebear that ambushed us, and I think he only did that because he was surprised.)

Of how he’s started calling me by my first name whenever I start to lose the edges of my magic.

(I like how he says my name. Better than how he usually says _Snow_ , anyway.)

I take in a deep breath of the forest air, and I swear the Wavering Wood smells _just_ like Baz right now. I can feel my magic start to come back to me, coating my skin like lotion before pushing back into me.

**BAZ**

Simon Snow told me he liked my laugh. With no prompting.

He just…heard me laugh. And said he liked it, like it wasn’t some kind of superb revelation that completely wrecked my heart.

I look over at his side of the room, and I feel my mouth dip into a frown at how empty it seems without him in it. I almost want to get him back—scratch that, there’s no _almost_ about it. I want to drag him up the stairs to our tower and interrogate him about why he said what he said so that my heart has no chance to latch onto it and turn his words into new daydream material. (Practically everything Snow ever says has found its way into a daydream or fantasy of some sort. I’m horribly pathetic for him, I know.)

It’s probably a good thing that he left when he did; I don’t know if I could have kept from kissing him if he gave me another compliment, and that would violate the very first rule we made for our fake relationship, and then I’d just be in a real pinch, wouldn’t I? “ _There’s no one here_ ,” he’d say, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. “ _Why’d you do that? You broke our rule!_ ” And then he’d be forced to end our little scheme, and we’d go back to being enemies, and I’d have to live the rest of my life knowing what kissing Snow felt like and never being able to feel it again. No, him going to get some air is for the best.

I made the no snogging thing a rule for a _reason_. It would ruin me. I’d kiss him, and then I’d say something stupid to explain myself, like _I love you_ or _I’ve never wanted to kill you_ or _You’re it for me, Chosen One_. And he wouldn’t do any of the things that I would want him to do—like kiss me again, or tell me he’s always loved me, or get down on his knees and beg for me to be his boyfriend. He probably wouldn’t ask me to explain why I did it, like I’m allowing myself to imagine he would; he’d probably just punch me.

It’s like all of our other rules: there for a very, very good reason.

After the Penny incident (which still makes my blood boil when I think about it—Bunce really isn’t the greatest friend if she couldn’t see that asking about the realness of my relationship with Snow was freaking him out. He was _oozing_ magic, for Crowley’s sake! Pay a little more attention to your surroundings next time, Bunce!), and once we’d gone downstairs and gotten Snow something to eat, we got out a new piece of paper and came up with the rest of the rules.

It basically boils down to me not allowing Snow to do any of the things I’ve imagined him doing if we were to actually date. No kissing, no calling me pet names other than “bunny” and “lover” (because I _detest_ those endearments, and I’m not equipped to handle him using ones that I actually adore—when we were figuring that rule out, Snow called me “sweetheart” as a test word, and I forgot how to breathe or talk, so we can’t have any of that), no interlocking our fingers whenever we hold hands, and no big gestures to convince people we’re together. There are other rules too—like me being able to help him whenever he’s going off, no questions asked, and us not being allowed to tell our friends the truth of our relationship, except in the instance that Wellbelove figures us out and/or confesses her feelings to him. But none of them feel quite as important to me as the ones about what kind of boyfriends we can be to each other.

I think, if we didn’t have those rules and I got to see what being with Snow was really like, that I would never be able to go back. It would kill me. To get a firsthand preview of what he’s going to be like when he and Wellbelove finally get together. To hear him call her “sweetheart” and mean it like he never did with me.

So, we have rules. And Snow leaving after complimenting my laugh was good practice in me not breaking any of them.

But it’s getting dark, and dinner started ten minutes ago, and Snow’s been gone for almost an hour.

And there aren’t any rules that say I can’t go looking for him to make sure he’s okay.

So I’m not breaking any of them when I get off my bed, pocket my wand in my sleeve, and leave Mummers House to search for him. I’m really abiding by them, if you think about it—the rule about him going off practically _asks_ me to make sure he’s okay.

He might need me. To stop him from going off.

And he didn’t tell me what part of the Wavering Wood he was going to. It may take me ages to find him. It’s best for me to get to him before the drawbridge comes up and he’s stuck outside all night.

I won’t kiss him when I see him. I’ve refrained myself from acting on my urge to kiss him for a while now—I can keep doing it. All he said was that he liked my laugh. He didn’t say that he liked _me_ , or that he wanted to date me, or that this thing with Agatha was a silly distraction to keep him from acting on any non-heterosexual urges.

He just likes my laugh. He probably likes everybody’s. He probably likes laughs in general. That’d be just like him, really, to love something as genuine as the sound of laughter. It’s a Chosen One thing to do. As if I needed more reasons to love him. ( _Love_. Merlin and Morgana, I’m in _love_ with him. Can’t believe it took him asking me to fake date him for me to recognize it.) (I think I’ve loved him for a while.)

I realize it as I’m nearing the Wood. That, Crowley, it’s going to hurt when this thing is over, isn’t it?

Even if I keep him at arm’s length; even if I don’t let him kiss me or buy me flowers or crush my fingers between his, Snow becoming someone else’s person is going to _hurt_. And he’ll probably thank me for helping him get the girl, and we’ll have to be friends, and I’ll have to act like it was the bro-est of bro things to fake date him, and that will all just make it hurt _so much worse_ than if he’d simply figured out this Wellbelove stuff by himself.

Simon Snow is going to break my heart, and he’s not even going to mean it.

But I’m a Pitch, which means that I’ll get through it—I’ve got no other choice. If this is as close to having him as I’ll get, well, then I’ll just have to make the best of it. I can cover up these memories with new ones after I graduate, if he doesn't kill me first. I’ll date every man with blue eyes and curly hair that I can find, and I’ll make every single one of them fall in love with me. Then I’ll break all of their hearts, one by one, until my need has been sated.

And Snow will go and be happy without me. He’ll forget we even did this. He’ll get his perfect, golden life with his perfect, golden girl, and they’ll have a whole litter of perfect, golden children, and no one will wonder where _Baz Pitch_ fits into the picture. Because I _don’t_ fit into it, and I never will, and I don’t know why I keep trying to fool myself into thinking that I might.

He said he liked my laugh. That’s _it_. He didn’t say, “ _Oh, Baz, you’re so attractive, and I love everything about you. More than your laugh. All of you. Because I’m gay now. Also, I know the cure to vampirism—it’s a kiss from the Chosen One. Happy day for you._ ”

People can like a person’s laugh and not like _them_.

I’m a right mess by the time I find Simon at the edges of the Wood. (I figured he’d be a bit harder to find. Maybe he doesn’t want to get assaulted by an angry dryad.) I hardly want to see him anymore. But the sight of him when I do fills me with something.

I’m looking at him from the side, and he’s got his eyes closed, a hand on the side of his face, and I can _see_ it as his magic starts to go back into him.

He’s a _vision_.

He inhales prettily, and his magic all but disappears back inside of him.

 _Crowley_.

I think I must inhale too sharply, because in the next instant, his eyes snap open and he drops down to pick up the sword he left lying in the grass before he pops back up, twists, and points the weapon at my throat.

“Oh,” he says once he realizes it’s me. I, intelligently, can’t say a single thing; he’s shocked it out of me by how bloody brilliant he looked when he went for his sword. He still looks handsome with it angled at my trachea—he’s got this thatch of curls that’s falling in front of his forehead, and it’s just lovely framed with his eyes.

Another sight to add to the daydream vault.

“Hi,” he says, releasing himself from his stance and bringing the sword to disappear at his hip. I frown.

“Hello, Snow,” I manage to say back. Then I remember what I was seeing when I came over here, so I ask, “What was that? With your magic?”

His face flushes; I have half a mind to stick my fangs into one of his cheeks and see how much blood I can pull out. (The other half is, par for the course, thinking about kissing him.) (I think I’ll be contemplating kissing him when he murders me someday. He’ll have me on the ground, sword run through my chest, and I’ll still be wondering what his lips would feel like.) “Oh, that,” he says. He reaches up a hand to rub at the back of his neck and looks down at the ground instead of at me.

He’s embarrassed.

I bring the image back: him standing, eyes shut, hand touching his cheek. His magic slipping back under his skin after he’d inhaled.

After he’d breathed my scent in, no doubt.

I try my best to smirk at him, but I think it comes across softer than that. “You were thinking about me to get yourself to stop going off, weren’t you?”

The red in his face deepens, and there’s my answer.

“Well,” I say, pretending my heart isn’t doing dramatic flips inside my chest, “it worked, didn’t it?”

“Kind of,” he grumbles. He still won’t look at me. “Worked better after I smelled you.”

He’s trying to kill me. He is. There’s no way he doesn’t know what this is doing to me, to hear that _I’m_ the thing that can bring him back to Earth. To hear that the smell of me pushes his magic back in.

I mean, I already knew that. I’ve seen it firsthand. But it’s different for _him_ to know it too. Snow is very good at not knowing things. He hasn’t figured out that I’m in love with him, even though I’ve done a horrible job of masking it since this fake dating thing started. He hasn’t realized that the way Wellbelove looks at him is the same way he looks at her.

So I didn’t think he’d realize that smelling me grounds him.

“Well,” I say before I can do something I won’t regret enough, “it’s time for dinner. Let’s go.”

I walk away without waiting for Snow to follow. He does catch up to me, though, in the next few seconds, and settles in stride right next to me. The whole way back, our knuckles keep knocking into each other. I’m too pathetic to pull my hand back and stop it, and Snow just keeps letting it happen. (Because it’s not doing the same things to him that it’s doing to me. _He’s_ not going mental at the slightest hand touch. He’s just…touching my hand with his.)

I’m not sure how late to dinner we’re going to be, but I _am_ sure that we’ll have enough time for Snow to scarf something down. I’ll steal some food from the kitchens if I have to. He hasn’t eaten at my table yet, even though he’s not sitting with Bunce and Wellbelove at the moment. I’m not sure where he goes after he gets his four platefuls—probably back to our room, if I had to guess.

Maybe I should tell him that he can eat with us now. If he wants.

We _are_ supposed to play as boyfriends. Boyfriends eat together, right? Not that I’ll be doing much eating, but Snow eats enough for the both of us. He should have a place to sit, and it should be right next to me.

Before I get up the nerve to ask him, though, we’re already outside the dining hall doors, and as we approach, I feel Simon’s hand snag mine. By instinct, I try to snatch it back, but he doesn’t let go, so I just end up dragging our hands up to hover over my chest. This close, I can see how his skin stands out against mine—speckled gold on pale grey.

He huffs beside me. “I thought we would hold hands. When we go in.”

I clear my throat and let our hands fall back down between us before he can get any ideas about letting me go. (His hand feels calloused and rough. Almost like mine.) (I’d hold his hand for the rest of my life.) I don’t look at him. “Yes. Of course.”

“This okay? How I’m holding it?”

I gulp and keep my eyes trained on the doors in front of us. “Perfect, Snow.”

“Simon.”

“Hm?”

“Don’t be cute.”

 _Don’t be cute_. These doors are super interesting. Very well made. Good craftsmanship. “I have no idea what you’re referring to.” _Don’t be cute_.

He knocks his free hand against my chin softly and turns my face so I’m staring into his. There’s a soft light here, right above us in the archway before the entrance, and it’s casting his face in all kinds of dramatic lighting. His eyes are bright, and the cute little lopsided smile he’s giving me is… _Crowley_. Absolutely destroying me.

I really want to kiss him.

**SIMON**

It’s not real. But sometimes…

Sometimes, it feels like it is. Kind of. Like he could be my boyfriend. Like I could be his.

And it doesn’t feel bad.

I don’t know how to describe it—I don’t know if this is what _good_ feels like. I’ve not had anything to compare it to. Nothing real, anyway. The closest I’ve got is whatever is happening with me and Agatha, and this still doesn’t feel anything like that.

My hand is still under his chin.

I don’t know why my hand is still there. Or why my thumb is resting in the spot just below his bottom lip. Or why he’s letting it.

Or why I’m moving my face closer to his.

**BAZ**

I think I’m going to break our first rule.

I’ll apologize, of course. Say that I got overwhelmed. Blame it on being touch-starved or something. He’s stopped smiling at me, but that’s okay. It would make it harder to do this if he was.

I’m going to shut his lips closed with my mouth. (He’s a mouthbreather when he’s not trying to kill me with his smiles. It’s disgustingly endearing.) He still has his hand tucked under my chin, and he’s got that rough thumb of his pushed into the divot below my lips, and I _swear_ to all magic that I keep seeing him glance down at where my mouth has parted. I think our faces are closer than they were a moment ago, too.

I’m going to kiss him, and it’s going to be a glorious way to end this whole charade.

**DEV**

Baz is taking too bloody long.

“That’s it,” I say to Niall, pushing myself up from the table. “I’m finding him.”

“Okay,” Niall replies as he continues eating his macaroni cheese without looking up at me. “Let me know if you find Snow as well. Would love to ask them both some questions.”

“Mate, me too.”

“The first one being: why doesn’t he sit with us? _I’m_ not telling him he can’t sit with us; are you?”

“I would _never_ ,” I say, feigning offence at the mere accusation. Then I relax and shrug. “But Baz is weird. He might not want him eating with us. Boyfriends may not get the luxury that we do.”

“Fair point,” Niall concedes, nodding once and swallowing another bite. He continues talking after a moment. “Speaking of boyfriends, here’s my second question: who is going to compensate us for all of the emotional labor we put in when those two hated each other?” He turns his head so he’s looking up at me, and he’s got this right pitiful look in his eyes. I snicker. “The work we’ve done has been positively _dreadful_. I would love to receive something for it.”

“When I find them, I’ll be sure to give them your address for the check.” I start to walk away. Baz is probably still in Mummers, right?

I hear Niall’s tray scrape against the table, and then he’s next to me, walking towards the big set of double doors with me like he was going to come the whole time. “Do you think they could just send it to our room? Wouldn’t even have to pay for postage—they could slide it under the door and be done with it.”

I let out a laugh. “You know, I’m not actually sure Snow’s got the money for a check,” I say, face turned back to Niall as I push both doors open. (We don’t _need_ both doors open, but it makes me feel a certain way to _make_ them both open.) (Niall also stares at my arms when I do it. So.) “Maybe he can sneak us some of that leprechaun’s gold—”

“Simon— _mmph_ ,” I hear someone say. And when I look to see who could possibly have been waiting behind these doors, right in the way of anybody trying to leave the hall, the sight does not disappoint.

Baz’s got his mouth smushed against Snow’s cheek, and _Snow’s_ mouth is hanging open and turned towards us like we’ve startled him. Snow’s also as red as can be, and if Baz didn’t have his _affliction_ (Niall and I are his best friends; of course we bloody know about it. You can only break down crying so many times before your friends get you to tell them why), I do believe he’d look much the same.

“Basil!” I say, letting the doors fall shut behind me before clapping him on the shoulder when he tries to get away. He’s dropped Snow’s hand and shoved a few inches of space between them, but I know what I saw. He’s not getting out of this one.

Niall, good man that he is, does the same to Snow. “Snow,” he says, grinning like someone’s just told him the best joke. “Lovely to see you here.”

Baz glares at me. I smirk back. “Dev,” he forces out. “How nice of you to find us.” I don’t think he means it.

“I’m sorry, were we _interrupting_ something?” I ask, shooting a look from him to Snow and back.

I can _see_ the murderous intent flash in his eyes. It causes me to break into a grin. “Yes. You can leave now.”

“But you haven’t had dinner,” Niall says, looking at Simon. “Have you, Snow?”

“Er,” he says, twisting his fingers into a patch of curls at the back of his head. “Yeah. No. Haven’t.”

“Brilliant. It’s settled then.” I let go of Baz to hold a door open; Niall copies me a second later. And then we’re just holding the dining hall doors open like we’re waiting for the Queen to pass through. “Let’s eat.”

**BAZ**

I was going to kiss him. _He_ looked like he was going to kiss me _back_. But then my arsehole _friends_ decided to interrupt, and instead of kissing Simon, I wound up with my lips pressed up against his cheek. And it wasn’t bad—I’d like to do it again, if he’d let me—but it wasn’t what was about to happen.

They didn’t know that we were right outside the hall, but they didn’t have to go searching for us in the first place either. We were _there_. We were about to go in. Just as soon as we’d kissed.

(I can’t believe I almost _kissed_ him on the lips. I can’t believe I _did_ kiss him on the cheek. _On the cheek_. How soft. How _intimate_.) (I’ve never kissed anyone there. I’ve never kissed anyone at all anywhere. He was warm.)

I hazard a glance up at Simon while he’s still heaping food onto his plate. Once he's finished, he moves to my table and just kind of...hovers, I guess. He doesn't sit down next to me; instead, he stands over the empty seat below him, like he’s afraid to touch it. I suppose I still haven’t asked him to sit down with us, and I guess years of animosity make it a little hard for him to think that I’d allow it.

I go to remedy that, but when I open my mouth to do so, it’s like I can’t get any of the words out.

I close my mouth. Open it again. _No words_. I’m just sat here, gaping like a fish.

This is something I’m not equipped to ask him, I realize. I’ve never even gone through the motions in my head—what it would be like for Simon to be at my table and have me ask him to sit down beside me. Most of my fantasies are just one of us stomping across whatever room we’re in and giving the other one a good snog before walking away. I’ve not dealt with the stuff that would happen _after_ we became boyfriends; my dreams never let me imagine it that far.

I’m…afraid, I think. Of how I’ll react if he says no. I’ve never asked Simon Snow a question like that before, one where I didn’t think I already knew the answer. One where it’s evident that I care about him and that I _want_ him near me. If I ask him if he’ll sit next to me, then—then it’s out there, hanging in the air between us.

But that’s what boyfriends do. Right? Even fake ones. They eat together at mealtimes. They hold hands. They almost kiss.

I almost kissed him, for Crowley’s sake. _Surely,_ I can ask him to sit with us.

But as he looks between me and the doors, I realize that I can’t. I can’t do it. I’m not as good as Snow; I can’t just _ask_ for what I want. I can’t just snag his wrist and say, “Stay, won’t you?” I can’t put myself in that position.

Kissing him was something entirely different. It—it wasn’t just me telling him how I felt. It was me going into it pretty much knowing the answer I would receive. Even when it looked like he might have kissed me back, I still expected to get a punch instead. A bluster to end all blusters. A going off. He was there, and our faces were close, and if he’d magically kissed me back, then that would have been an immediate answer too.

This…

Somehow, asking him to stay and eat with me feels like asking for something more. What do I do if he says no?

What do I do if he says _yes_? Then he knows. He’ll _know_. I could play it off as just playing up the boyfriend part, but I don’t feel like I could. If he asked me if it was just for show, I don’t think I could lie to him.

Merlin. He’s already walking away.

“See you later, yeah?” he says over his shoulder, staring back at me from his beautiful, brave face. He’d be able to ask. He’d be able to ask me to stay, if he wanted me to. He’d say, “Baz, please,” and I’d be at his side before he’d finished the last syllable.

All I can do is nod. He keeps walking away from me.

I’m a coward. We almost kissed, and I’m _still_ a coward. I’ve missed my opportunity. I can’t just _do_ this. I can’t just—

“Hey, Snow,” Dev perks up from across the table, “stay. You can eat with us, mate.”

My gaze snaps to him. I expect him to be staring at Simon, but instead, he’s looking at me. His lips are pursed into a thin line, and he looks like he’s expecting something from me. I look from him to Simon and back, and he tilts his head in Snow’s direction like he’s pointing at him.

I look at Simon again, and he’s looking at me.

_Say something._

I gulp.

 _Say something, Baz. Just say it. It’s not that hard_.

I’m taking too long. I can feel that I am. I can _see_ it in his eyes when he becomes disappointed, when he starts pulling away, when he figures he shouldn’t stay, and then he starts saying, “It’s fine, really, I can—”

_Say something!_

“ _No_ ,” I practically shout. Simon stops talking; the volume drops around us tremendously, so I know that several people at the neighboring tables do too. I look away from everybody, clear my throat, and try again, calmer this time. “No, Simon,” I say to Dev’s tray of half-eaten food. “Sit with us.” Then, because I can tell he’s still looking at me like he’s unsure (I can feel it, his eyes on me still), I close my eyes and whisper, “Please.”

When I finally look back over at him, there’s a smile split across his face. It’s like someone’s stuck the sun behind his teeth. I feel like I have to squint at it. “Yeah,” he says, walking back over to me and dropping into the seat like it’s made for him. “Yeah, okay. Thanks.”

 _Thank you_ , I mouth to Dev once Simon starts eating.

 _No problem_ , he mouths back before turning his body towards Niall. Letting me sit here with Simon like it’s just us. It’s like he’s trying to give us enough privacy to talk about something over here.

I angle my body towards Simon and just kind of stare at him as he eats. It’s not the most glamorous sight because Simon has the manners of an ill-trained puppy, but I still feel my heart give a little tug. I want to talk to him. About everything. About how we almost kissed. About how we didn’t. About if he liked it when I kissed his cheek.

What I think about saying is: “ _I almost kissed you. But I kissed your cheek instead because you turned away too quick. It was good, though. I liked it. Did you like it? Can we add that to our rules? No snogging, except for cheek kisses? I think I could do that._ ”

What I actually say is: “You’re eating like you haven't had anything all day.”

_Did you like when I kissed your cheek?_

_Was it okay?_

_Do you hate me again?_

He swallows his food before answering, probably because he knows that I’ll make fun of his manners if he doesn’t. He angles his body towards me too, shifting positions in his seat. And then our knees are touching. And I think I’m going to faint.

“I’m hungry again,” he says, apparently ignoring our knees. I decide I need to ignore them too, for sanity’s sake, so I look back at his waiting eyes.

“I can see that.”

“I didn't have any scones today. I'm starved.”

“How do you get through a night of sleep without eating?”

He shoots me an uneven grin. “Dunno, Baz. It’s difficult.”

Are we flirting? Is this what flirting is like? Me making jabs at him that end with him grinning at me?

Why hasn’t this been going on _the whole time_?

**PENNY**

Oh, abso _lutely_ not.

It was one thing for Simon to stop eating with us. I get it. He’s mad at me. I shouldn’t have pushed him as far as I did. I should have just let him and Baz be…whatever they wanted to be.

It is an entirely _other_ thing for him to sit at Baz’s table.

We’ve never been apart for this long. We’ve never been the type of friends who have to take _space_ from each other. If he’s mad at me, he gets all of it out within the first five minutes; if I’m mad at him, I’m over it by the end of the day. We don’t stay away from each other in the little time that we’re mad either—everything just gets a little bit tenser like we’re flexing a muscle we haven’t used in a while, which is fine, because it means that things are going to be back to normal soon.

I haven’t seen him around at mealtimes for almost a week, so I just assumed that he was eating by himself somewhere. Maybe that he was even with the Mage, taking the weirdness between us as an opportunity to come up with a plan against the Humdrum. It wouldn’t be the first time that Simon has gotten pulled away to strategize with the Mage; maybe he was just the one doing the pulling this time.

But I don’t _want_ him to be eating alone if he doesn’t want to be by himself, and I don’t _want_ him spending lunch with just the Mage. I know how he gets lost in everything he’s supposed to be sometimes. He needs people around him, talking to him like he’s real. No offence to the Mage—well, maybe some offence—but he talks to Simon a lot like he’s just the thing from the prophecies. The Greatest Mage, sent here to save us all. He doesn’t talk to him like he’s a fifteen-year-old kid who stumbled into being magic. So spending all meals with him would not be good for Simon’s mental health.

I want Simon to have people he can talk to who treat him like he’s a real person. So if we _are_ going to have some space from each other, the least he could do is eat with somebody I trust around him. If he chose Elspeth or something, I wouldn’t argue it. She’s a good sort—she’d tell me if Simon needed me.

But seeing him with Baz, Dev, and Niall is making my teeth hurt from how hard I’m grinding them together.

“I’m going over there,” I say to Agatha, readying myself to stand. Before I can actually get up, though, her hand shoots out and circles my wrist.

“You are _not_ ,” she hisses, but it doesn’t have much weight when she’s not even looking at me because she’s watching Simon. She clearly also wants to go over there and drag him back to us. I don’t know what’s keeping either of us from actually getting up and doing it.

“He shouldn’t be over there,” I say, hoping she’ll help me.

“I know. I _know_.” She squeezes her eyes shut and sighs before turning back to me. When she opens them again, she looks practically defeated. It's not a good look for her. “But we can’t force him over here.”

Her hold on my wrist is still strong. “I just want to talk to him.”

“How many times have you apologized?”

I bite my lip. “Great question.”

Her eyes narrow at me. The defeat erases itself from her face. “You _have_ apologized, right?” When I don’t immediately reply, she gasps and says, “ _Penny_ ,” like she’s admonishing a child.

“I just wanted to make sure he was safe!”

“You barged into their room, spelled Basil into the floor, and then kept asking what their relationship was until you forced Simon to go off. You should have apologized _then_. You should be apologizing _now_.”

“Let go of me and I will.”

We stare at each other for a few more seconds before she drops my wrist like it’s stung her. “Fine,” she says, her voice hard and her gaze leaving mine. “Go apologize. God.”

Agatha isn’t my best friend, so I don’t care as much about whether she’s mad at me. But I still don’t like how she said that. Like I’d disappointed her. It makes me feel…bad.

I stand up, but before I walk away, I say, “I’m going to get him back, Agatha. I promise.”

“Yeah,” she whispers. “Okay.” But she won’t look at me anymore, and I feel like I’ve done something really wrong. I feel like—like maybe I’ve messed them up. Simon and Agatha, I mean. Like maybe I've pushed them further apart or something.

I know I didn’t. _I’m_ not the one who decided that Simon and Baz “dating” was a good idea. (I still don’t know if it’s real or not. That list makes it seem really fake. But the way they were looking at each other…no, it’s fake. I still think it has to be. At least Simon’s side of it.)

But Simon’s not sitting with us anymore. Because of me.

So maybe I did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi, welcome to "i don't like the pet name lover and now neither does baz because i say so." LOVE is different than LOVER. LOVE is cute and makes me go feral. LOVER feels fake and like i'm in a horrible romcom. also StarOrgana is reading the Carry On that i got her for Christmas and i am SO EXCITED. she made it to chapter 61 and freaked out, as she should


	7. The First Apology

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Penny's apology leads to some questions. Is it really a love triangle if two of them don't know how they feel? Ebb makes an appearance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this didn't come out sooner. been having a rough time with, like, life. apologies. be warned, we are starting to enter angsttown, population: this fic. this chapter did not end up where i wanted it to end up, but that's just par for the course at this point.
> 
> mayhaps listening to taylor swift while i was writing most of this chapter was not the best idea!

**PENNY**

I’m going to get Simon back. If not for my own sake, then for his and Agatha’s.

I don’t care _what_ Baz has to say about it. Even if Baz has it in his head that their relationship is something that it isn’t. (The way he was looking at Simon the other day…Nicks and Slicks! It was like he believed that they were actually together.) He’s not meant to be with Simon. He’s meant to be his enemy—all Chosen Ones have an enemy, right? Granted, Simon has _two_ , if you count Baz _and_ the Humdrum, but Simon can handle two enemies. I think, if he went off at the right time, that he could take them both out in one shot.

So I’m going to apologize. And I’m going to get him back. And this whole thing with Baz will be some weird memory we’ll all crack jokes about after we graduate. In ten years, I’ll show up at Simon and Agatha’s door, and I’ll say, “ _Hey, remember that time fifth year when Simon and Baz had some kind of pseudo-relationship thing going on? Was that wild or what? Anyway, your kids are beautiful. Buy a bigger house._ ” Because that’s what is supposed to happen.

Just to see how it plays out, I imagine showing up at a house with Simon and Baz behind the door instead, and it doesn’t feel right at all. “ _Oh, Baz, I see you’ve still spelled Simon to be in love with you. How thoughtful. Please kindly fuck off and give me my best friend back. The one who hates you, yeah, that one. Thanks._ ”

Yeah. I’m getting him back.

And maybe then everything will go back to normal.

**BAZ**

Bunce is coming over here, and I don’t know what to do. I really don’t want her to take Simon back across the cafeteria with her. I like sitting next to him; I like having him near me when he doesn’t have to be, and I know that’s selfish of me, I do—but I feel like being selfish right now.

In our room, it’s like an obligation that we have to spend _some_ amount of time together. There’s no other place for him to sleep, so that room at the top of the tower has always been the space where I could be close to him and not suffer the consequences of revealing how I felt. I could stare at him across the room while he was sleeping and pretend that he wouldn’t swing on me if he woke up and caught me in the act.

But we’re not in our room, and he’s right beside me, and he’s looking over and _smiling_ at me whenever he catches me staring out of the corner of my eye. He’s not starting a fight over it. He’s just…letting it happen.

I’m going mad about it.

I never thought I could have something anywhere close to this. I don’t want Bunce to ruin it by getting Simon back on track. I don’t want her to remind him that he’s not supposed to share those smiles with me. I don't want her trying to get his Chosen One storyline back in order.

That’s exactly what she’s coming over here to do, though. I can see it in the way that she’s walking over to us like she’s about to get back something we stole.

She’s going to take him back where he belongs: next to her and Wellbelove. With his dread companion and his destiny—because that’s where he’s always meant to be. Not sat next to his nemesis, trading looks. (Am I still his nemesis if I’ve kissed him on the cheek?) (Is he still mine if he’s grinning at me like he’s not?)

She’s almost here. Just another few feet, and she’s going to be on us.

Screw this. I turn my body so that more of me is touching more of Simon—our knees were already knocking together, but now I’m pushing against him with arm, calf, thigh. He’s pushing back too, letting us touch like this while he sits there grinning like a loon. If she’s going to take him back, I’m going to use these remaining moments just to get close and drink him in, obvious and unashamed. Him and his toothy smiles and all of his freckles and that rosy blush still dusting across his face. He’s breathtaking. I think I could look at him for the rest of my life and never get bored. I could get stuck looking at his throat for eternity and wouldn’t complain once.

“Simon, I want to talk,” Bunce says, getting right to business and effectively ending the staring contest I’m having with Simon’s neck. I try not to appear disappointed that she’s here when I look up at her, but judging by Bunce’s glare when her eyes find mine, I’m not sure I manage it. She stares me down for a couple more moments before exhaling and turning her gaze back to Simon; my eyes follow. (Because I’m pathetically in love with him and will take any excuse to stare.) He’s looking at her like he’s a dog who’s had an accident and has just been found out. It makes my skin feel tight and anger flare hot inside my chest. _He_ shouldn’t be looking at _her_ with that expression; _he_ did nothing wrong. Why is he the one looking like he needs to apologize?

I don’t want him to go. I want to grab his hand and pull him back down when he starts getting up. I want to magic him stuck. “Yeah, okay,” he says, brushing his hands off on his trousers as he rises from his seat, severing the physical contact that we have. My fingers settle onto my thighs and begin twitching, aching to reach out and keep him close.

If I were stronger, maybe I would do it. Make it clear to everyone that I’m in love with Simon Snow and that I like sitting here with him. Keep him from leaving me behind right when we’ve started to get along.

But I’m not a strong person. And I’ve already exhausted what little reserve I had in telling him to sit next to me after Dev got his attention. So I don’t say anything this time.

Instead, I watch as Bunce grabs hold of his wrist once he’s within reaching distance and begins pulling him with her towards the double doors. She doesn’t even say anything else. Doesn’t give him a choice in going with her. Doesn’t tell him to wipe that sorry look off his face. Just grabs hold of him and doesn’t let go.

 _I wish_ …

“Have fun!” Dev shouts after them as we watch them go. “Don’t do anything I would do!”

If Penelope Bunce were a different person, I believe that she would have just given Dev the finger at that remark— _I_ would have. But she doesn’t. I watch her shoulders roll underneath her jumper and her head shake like she’s trying to shake Dev off. Simon says, “Ignore him, Pen. He’s like this tonight,” and runs his hand over the small of her back.

 _I wish that I_ …

Dev pipes up again. “I heard that, Snow! I will have you know that I am like this _every_ night!”

“Will you let him be?” Niall asks, slinging an easy arm around Dev’s shoulders. “Let them go in peace.”

 _I wish that I could tell him I’m in love with him_.

I watch their backs as they pass through the doors, and then I watch the doors long after they swing shut.

**SIMON**

I’m glad that Penny decided we could do this out here. I don’t know what I would have done if she’d made us have this conversation inside. Although I miss sitting next to Baz, it should be easier to concentrate out here without him crowding my senses. I feel like I can maybe actually pay attention to whatever Penny’s going to tell me now.

At least, I _thought_ I’d be able to pay more attention to her out here. But we’re standing in basically the exact same spot that Baz and I were standing in when he kissed my cheek, so of course Baz is on my mind again.

And I’m remembering how close we were to _not_ kissing on his cheek. I can still picture his face up close with mine. The way he was staring at my lips. How he sounded when he said my name.

I feel my cheeks get hot.

It’s fine. It’s _fine_. This is fine, and Baz and I can figure out whatever that was later. Right now, it’s time to fix this Penny stuff. I really am glad that she’s doing this. I’m tired of not having my best friend. I miss her. Sitting with Baz tonight hasn’t been bad, though…

“Simon,” she says, drawing all my attention back to her. Right. Baz later, Penny now. I don’t even know where to _begin_ with sorting out the Baz stuff, but this thing between me and Pen—that’s something we can figure out.

“Penny,” I say back.

She’s still holding onto my wrist, but she lets it go now in favor of holding onto me by the shoulders with both hands. She hasn’t looked me in the eyes since we’ve come outside, but she does now after a breath, and she looks really sad. It makes my chest twinge a little bit thinking that I’m the reason she looks like that.

I’ve missed her so much. We’ve never fought like this. Does this even count as a fight? I don’t know. Because we don’t _have_ fights. But we’ve never been away from each other this long while we’re at school. I’ve never not sat at our table on purpose for longer than a day. (The times when the Mage has made me be with him during lunch or dinner I don’t consider _on purpose_. _I_ didn’t suggest we meet up during mealtimes.) It’ll be really nice to have her back.

“I’m sorry,” she says, eyes boring into my face. “I’m really sorry for what I did, Simon. I’m sorry that I made you go off.”

My mouth breaks into a smile. This is all I’ve been wanting her to say. I shrug myself out of her arms and instead opt to scoop her into a big hug, crushing us together. She makes this noise like she’s choking, and I feel her mumble into my neck, “Hold on, Si, I’m not done.”

“Why not?” I ask into her hair. She smells good. Like Penny. “You apologized. We’re good.”

“I have more to say.”

I sigh and loosen my hold on her enough that she’s able to pull away to look into my face again. My arms are still swung loosely around her back, and she moves a hand up to fix her glasses before settling them both back onto my shoulders. “Okay,” I say, smiling down at her. “Shoot.”

“I am sorry,” she repeats. I can tell she’s got more she wants to say after that, so I keep my mouth shut and let her continue. “I am. I was only trying to protect you, though.”

I feel my smile fall a little. So we’re still on this. On me needing protection from Baz.

“I didn’t need to be _protected_ ,” I say. My magic starts to itch under my skin, but I inhale a deep breath of Penny and try to tamp it down again. I wish she would stop trying to talk about this. But the look on her face tells me we’re not done yet.

“It seemed like you did.”

My smile disappears completely. “Ah.” _Come on, hold it in, think of Baz, keep it together._ I move back half a step, dropping my arms back down to my sides. Penny’s still clutching onto me like doing so will fix whatever is going on between us now.

“Simon,” Penny says, like dealing with me is too much effort, “come on.”

Normally, I would just let it go. Sometimes she says things like this that don’t make any sense to me. _I was only trying to protect you, though_. Like, why say that? What does it matter what she was trying to do? The end result is the same. I got swallowed up in my magic, and Baz had to pull me back out of it. Saying that she did it because she wanted to protect me only irritates me more.

I can’t let it go tonight. For some reason, it’s rubbing me the wrong way that she’s saying this, that she’s acting like Baz tries to kill me all the time. Because he doesn’t. If we’re being honest, I think I’m the one who instigates our fights most of the time, even if Baz is—well, I _think_ he’s a vampire, but Penny doesn’t believe me, so that’s not why she’s saying this. And it doesn’t matter if he is one anyway. At least, not anymore. Not right now.

Not when we almost…when we almost…

“When have I needed you to protect me from Baz?” I ask, putting a bit more distance between myself and Penny, enough so that her hands fall off of me. She seems annoyed by the movement. I don’t move back.

“You haven’t, until now!” she says emphatically, moving towards me again. I step back again, keeping myself out of her reach, and her hands land on empty air. She looks more annoyed at me now. “Look, I only did what I did to make sure you were safe.”

“Anathema,” I reply, knowing she’ll fill in the rest of the words.

“Still, Simon,” she says, but she doesn’t reach for me again, and I’m thankful for that. “You two are enemies one day, and then I hear from Agatha that Baz _kept you from going off_? That’s suspicious!”

“He didn’t hurt me.”

“ _Yes_. Which is _weird_.”

“It’s not.”

“It is. And he’s _still_ doing something to you now because you’re still letting him!”

My magic pulses through my veins, thick and fiery. I think about the way our room smells after Baz takes a shower, and it dulls a little. Stinging instead of burning. “He’s not,” I say gruffly, trying not to let on how much this is getting to me. I’m sure Penny knows; I’m sure she can smell my magic in the air.

“He is, Simon,” she says, hands balled up in fists down at her sides. Her eyes look like they do when she’s trying to debate someone and she knows she’s right. But this time, she’s not right—she’s actually so, so wrong. “Why else would you be sitting with him?”

I don’t even have to think about my answer. “Because I want to.”

She gapes at me. “Since _when_?” she asks, like it’s hard to believe. I guess it would have been hard to believe two weeks ago. But this isn’t two weeks ago. Things have changed. I wanted to sit with Baz tonight—I think that maybe I’ve wanted to do it for longer than that. Sitting next to him felt…good. It felt right. Like maybe I was sitting where I was always supposed to be sitting.

Shit. That sounds weird.

“I don’t know!” I tell her, reaching up and tugging a hand through my hair. “Since a few days ago!” That doesn’t feel like the whole truth. “Since forever!” Shit. That sounds like too much. Um. My other hand comes up to rub at the back of my neck. “I don’t know!”

Penny looks like someone’s just tried to convince her that Father Christmas is real. “Do you even _hear_ yourself, Simon? _Since forever?_ Simon, he’s clearly done something to you, I know he has!” She makes a move for me again, but I take another step back. She makes a noise of what I’m assuming is aggravation before continuing. “Forcing you to be in this fake relationship or something—”

“Not fake,” I respond before I can tell my mouth to not do that.

Penny’s staring. “…what?”

I didn’t mean to say that. Because it is fake…isn’t it?

Then why…

Why did I almost kiss him out here? Why did he look like he almost kissed me _back_?

Why is he the only person who can help me calm down my magic?

“It’s not fake,” I whisper. “I don’t think it is.”

“It is,” Penny says back. “Simon—”

“It’s _not_ ,” I try again, more frantic this time. I don’t know if I think what I’m saying is actually true. Or if I just want it to be.

Since when have I wanted to be in a real relationship with Baz?

“You don’t have to lie to me. I saw the paper. I know it’s fake.”

The paper. The stupid paper that has our stupid rules on it. We almost broke one of those rules. Right out here. With no one watching. Probably the most important one. _No snogging._

“What does that matter?” I say.

“Simon. _Of course it matters_.” When Penny realizes that I’m not going to reply to that, she keeps going. “You’re my best friend. I don’t want you to get hurt. Baz forcing you into a fake relationship—”

“He didn’t _force me_ into anything—”

“—is something that could hurt you.”

I huff. “How?”

“Well, for one,” Penny says, like she knows of more than one reason why being with Baz would be a horrible idea, “it’s pushing Agatha away, which I _know_ you don’t want.”

Agatha.

I haven’t genuinely thought about Agatha since before this whole thing started. I’ve just…been focusing on being with Baz, I guess. But we did start this because of Agatha. I wanted to date someone else to make her jealous, right? Instead of just asking her out myself?

I think that I don’t think about things enough.

Because, right now, that idea doesn’t make much sense.

I imagine it for a second: holding Agatha’s hand instead of Baz’s, feeling Agatha kiss my cheek instead of Baz, having the smell of Agatha fill my senses when I’m trying not to go off. It all makes my chest start to hurt a little bit. Like there’s a small ball of fire just sitting in its center.

I don’t think this is what _good_ feels like for other people. At least, it doesn’t feel good to _me_ , if I actually sit here and think about it. And no one I know has ever described it this way. I’ve never heard of a love story where someone said that liking somebody felt like something was being burned into their chest.

 _It’s pushing Agatha away_ , Penny said, _which I know you don’t want_.

I don’t even know what I _do_ want. But right now, it doesn’t feel like I want Agatha. Not like I thought I did.

I’m so bloody confused.

“What if it is?” I say softly, without meeting Penny’s eyes.

“ _Simon_ ,” she replies like she’s scandalized. “You can’t mean tha—”

I interrupt before she can finish and look at her again. “What does it feel like when you’re with Micah?” My hands drop back down to in front of me, and I wring them together.

“What?”

“What does it feel like?” I ask again. “When you’re with Micah?”

She contemplates the answer for a few moments, shooting me a confused look the whole time. It feels like I’ve been waiting for hours when she finally answers. (I think it’s only been a minute, though.) “It feels,” she begins, her face going all soft and weird, “like I’ve found the answer to a question. Like, I don’t know—like maybe he’s helped me figure myself out.”

Like she’s found the answer to a question.

I don’t know what question I’m supposed to be asking. _Do I want to date Baz? Am I gay? Do I like Agatha? What am I?_ I don’t know what question Micah’s answered for her, but I also kind of don’t _want_ to know. Not if he answered it for her that easily. Instead, I say, embarrassed, “Then it doesn’t feel like heartburn, I’m guessing.”

Penny narrows her eyes. My magic thrums in my muscles again. “Why would being with Micah feel like having heartburn?”

“I don’t know.”

“Simon,” she says, pinching the bridge of her nose underneath her glasses, “I think Baz is confusing you.”

Understatement of the bloody year. “Yeah.”

“It’s okay. We’ll figure out what he’s doing. Just because I can’t detect any spells on you doesn’t mean there’s not any.”

“I already told you,” I say, pulling at my curls again, “that he didn’t cast any spells on me.”

“He thralled you, then.” I think this is the first time she’s actually suggested that Baz has done something vampiric. For some reason, it annoys me. “Did something to make you confuse your feelings for Agatha with your feelings for him. Changed what you want into something different.”

“I don’t know what I want,” I say.

“Yeah,” Penny says back, like she has all the answers. “Because Baz has done something to you. It’ll be okay, Simon. I know what you want, and it’s Agatha, not Baz.”

How can _she_ know what I want when I have no idea?

I know that I’m _supposed_ to be with Agatha. She’s supposed to be my destiny. She’s the girl the Chosen One is supposed to end up with—she fits the bill perfectly. And if I’m the Greatest Mage, then that means she’s supposed to end up with me, right?

Right?

“What if…” I start the sentence, but the rest of the words die in my throat. I'm not even sure I want to know what the rest of the words _are_.

“What if what, Simon?”

I think about how that sentence ends. There's lot of ways to go with it. All I have to do is get some words out. That’s it. I just have to push them through my teeth, and then they’re—they’re out of me. I feel parched. I kind of can’t breathe.

“What is it? What if what?”

_What if I want Baz?_

_What if I don’t want Agatha anymore?_

_What if I like Baz instead of Agatha?_

_What if Baz and I actually date?_

_What if, what if, what if?_

“Simon, hey,” Penny says, and then I feel her hands on my cheeks, tilting my head so I’m looking at her. I don’t know when I started staring at the ground. “Hey. Agatha likes you a lot. I can tell. Before this Baz business, I thought that you liked her too. Was I wrong?”

It feels like someone is standing on my chest. Is this what it feels like for everyone else whenever they have to be around my magic? Like they can’t get any air?

“I don’t know,” I start, trying to push the words through. All I have to do is fucking say them. That’s all I have to do. I just have to _speak_. “He was. I mean. He was...”

“He was _what_ , Simon? Tell me.”

“He…we…I mean…”

I have to get out of here. I have to go to the Wood or something. I just need _space_. I need to be _not here_. I need to not be standing in this spot in front of the doors. Everywhere I can think to go, though, reminds me of Baz. Baz finding me in the Wood. Baz laughing at something I said in our room. Baz, Baz, Baz. Nowhere is safe from some memory of him.

My magic swells, and Penny coughs, letting go of my face to cover her mouth with her elbow. I need to see Baz. I need to not see Baz ever again. I need to find Agatha. I need to—I need to—I need to—

“ **I need to get away** ,” I say, drenched in my magic, and then I blink, and I’m outside the Watford gates.

**AGATHA**

The only reason I know something went wrong with Penny’s apology is because I can suddenly smell Simon’s magic over everything else in the dining hall.

“Jesus, save me,” I mutter, getting up from my chair. If it’s gotten bad enough that I can smell Simon’s smoky magic from here, then they probably need me. I glance over at Baz’s table as I walk, and he’s already standing. He says something to Dev and Niall that I don’t catch, and then he beats me to the doors. I follow him out, and he doesn’t even hold the door open for me even though I’m _right there_ and he totally could have. Too distracted by whatever is happening with Penny and Simon, I guess. I push through.

I expect to find them both instantly once I’m outside (it really would be just like them to have a private conversation right outside the doors), but no one is in the walkway. I look around for a few seconds, letting my eyes adjust, but it takes me a little while longer before I finally spot Penny’s ring glowing in the darkness ahead of us. I start walking to her.

I hear what she’s saying before I make it close. She’s casting the finding spell **Don’t go where I can’t follow** , which seems like a pretty intense spell to be using right now to find something until I realize that I don’t smell Simon anymore. Which means that Penny’s probably casting it for him. Which means that this apology was a complete disaster.

“Penny—” I begin, heading towards the beacon that is her ring, but Baz beats me to her and cuts my voice off.

“Bunce!” he shouts, sounding angry. “What did you do to Snow?”

“I didn’t do anything!” she shouts back, raising the hand that isn’t glowing as a blockade. “ _You_ need to leave!”

“Like hell I do,” Baz spats back. I make it to them in the middle of the Courtyard, and this close, I can see the worry etched into both of their faces. They both look scared shitless. Which is…interesting, considering one of them is his best friend and the other is his supposed nemesis. Well, I guess nemesis-turned-boyfriend, if Penny’s wrong about their relationship being fake. (I guess Baz _should_ look scared shitless over a Simon Snow disappearance now.) “Where is he, Bunce?”

“If I knew, do you think I would have cast a spell to find him?” As if her ring knows, it pulses with light, like it’s finally caught on to something. I think I'm the only one paying attention to it, though.

I look back up, and I watch as Baz’s worry shifts into something darker and angrier. I take the opportunity to shove myself between him and Penny before he can light her on fire.

“Okay,” I say, looking back and forth between them, “fighting won’t help us find him.” Then I focus on Penny alone when I say, “Tell us what happened.”

She glowers for a second, but it’s like everything washes away when she finally looks into my eyes. She deflates— _actually_ deflates, her shoulders curling down and air leaving her lungs and everything—and sniffs like she’s trying not to cry. “We were talking, and then we started arguing, and then he ca—”

Her eyes shoot over to Baz, and she stops talking abruptly.

“What did he do?” I prod, but Penny shakes her head and won’t stop glaring at Baz.

“Well, _I_ didn’t have anything to do with it!” he snaps. “Out with it, Bunce! What happened?”

“You’re his _enemy_ ,” she hisses. “Why should I tell you?”

“Merlin and bloody _Morgana_ —”

“Penny, oh my God,” I cut in impatiently, “just say it.”

She looks over at me like I’ve betrayed her. Or maybe like I’ve betrayed Simon, which is somehow worse in her book. She frantically glances between me and Baz before finally settling her gaze back on him.

“You can’t tell anyone,” she says fiercely, holding out her ring hand to him like she wants to give him a handshake. I don’t think she’s ever wanted to hold somebody’s hand less in her entire life, which is how I know she’s about to cast a spell. “You actually _can’t._ Alright?”

Baz takes her hand after a moment. “I understand. Do it.”

“ **An Englishman’s word is his bond** ,” she says, her ring shining brighter for a couple seconds before going back to the light pulsing glow it had before. “You will not tell anyone what I’m about to tell you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Baz says, pulling his hand back and shaking it out. “Now what did Snow _do_?”

Penny sighs. “He said the words _I need to get away_ , and then he just…” Penny pauses and gulps before she continues. “…disappeared.”

“That’s not a spell,” says Captain bloody Obvious.

“You’re a genius,” says Penny, deadpan.

“Where did he go?”

“Again, why do you think I cast a finding spell? _I don’t know where he went_.”

Baz exhales sharply and closes his eyes. Then he takes several deep breaths, and when he opens his eyes again, he looks more put together than he did before. He turns away from Penny, saying, “I’m going to cast one myself. We can all look for him,” and then takes out his wand and casts the same spell that Penny did earlier. The tip of his wand begins glowing and pulsing, just like Penny’s ring, and he takes off at a run, leaving us behind.

Penny makes a noise that sounds kind of like she’s retching. “That spell’s only supposed to work if you’re close with the person you’re trying to find,” she complains. “Why did it work for Baz?”

“Because they’re close,” I provide, lifting her ring arm up with one of mine and pushing us in the same direction Baz went in. After about ten feet, the ring begins to pulse brighter and more often, which I’m hoping is a good sign. I can just barely make out the point of Baz’s wand out in front of us. Hopefully he’ll spell the drawbridge down all by himself, and Penny and I won’t get in trouble for it. I really don’t want the Mage to give us detention because we went out and helped find Simon. (He’s got this thing about Simon using his magic and his magic alone to get himself out of situations. I don’t understand it. I mean, I get it. But I don’t _get_ it, you know? We all know how unstable Simon’s magic is on the best of days. He needs help sometimes. And that’s fine. The Mage shouldn’t punish him for needing other people.)

“They shouldn’t be.”

“And yet,” I say, trying not to let too many of my feelings slip into my voice, “here we are.”

**SIMON**

It didn’t take long for me to get back in. The gates have never kept me from coming inside before, and they didn’t try to do so tonight. I was leaking so much magic that they practically flung themselves open to let me pass.

Once I’m back inside Watford, I decide that I’ll go to Ebb’s instead of heading back to Penny. I really don’t want to continue _that_ conversation: “ _Baz spelled you, Simon.” Except that he didn’t. I came up with the fake dating scheme. Because I don’t think enough about the things that I do. We almost kissed._

Yeah. Not up for that.

Technically, I’m not supposed to be out here at all since the drawbridge is up, but Ebb doesn't have to know that I'm coming to her from here. I really don’t want to risk using my magic to actually spell the bridge down itself. The magic didn’t hurt _me_ when it did…whatever it did to transport me, but I’m not made of wood and rope. If I can transport myself directly to Ebb's barn, I won’t need to risk setting the drawbridge on fire to get to her. I’m still pouring out magic like a broken faucet, so when I say, “ **I need Ebb** ,” I appear right outside her door.

I’m not going to tell anybody that I can do that.

I knock and wait for her to answer while I try to get the edges of my magic back. I don’t think anything of it when she doesn’t respond immediately. She probably thinks that all the students will be inside finishing supper or hanging out in their rooms. She’s probably not expecting me to appear at the barn this late at night. I don't see any goats about, so I know she's already put everybody away.

I thought that I would be fine to stay out here for a little while, but Baz keeps popping up in my head. Sneering at me, glaring at me, sleeping across from me, looking at me when he thinks I’m not looking at him. Every version of him that I’ve seen and dealt with. They’re all running together. The version of him that kissed me on the cheek. The version of him that acted like I was burning him whenever we touched. The version of him that talked me out of going off.

He’s all I can think about. It makes my stomach drop.

Why doesn’t this feel like the first time I’ve thought about him like this?

“Ebb,” I say, knocking again and trying again to collect myself. “It’s Simon. Snow. Um. Can we talk?”

There’s some rustling from inside, and a sound like someone shouting, “ _Ow, fuck_.” I wait a few more seconds, and then the door swings open to show a very disheveled looking Ebb. Not that Ebb ever looks particularly, um, _not_ disheveled. This is just…different. Half of her shirt is tucked into her trousers while the other half is still sitting untucked. She only has one sock on.

“Hiya, boyo!” she says, her voice a few notches too high. Her breathing is really ragged too, like she just ran a mile or something. “What brings you out here?” She sucks in a semi-deep breath once she’s done talking, the first one I've heard her take that actually sounds like it has any air in it, and I watch her eyes squeeze shut like she’s just taken a bite of something sour.

“Your magic is all over the place,” she says.

“Uh,” I say. “Yeah.”

“Can I cast some spells on you?”

She’s really the only person who ever asks. I like that she does. “Yeah.”

She reaches for the inside wall behind her and comes back with her staff in her hand; then she starts casting. **Simmer down**. **Don’t worry, be happy**. **Steady on!** Whenever Ebb casts magic over me, it seems like it’s the only magic that ever does what it’s supposed to do every time. I don’t know why that is, but I’ve learned not to question it.

After a couple more spells, I feel like my magic isn’t falling out of me anymore, and I wave her back. “Thanks, Ebb.”

“Anytime, boyo,” she says with a smile. “Now, why’re you—”

“Um,” I say just as I catch sight of someone moving around behind Ebb. I don’t actually see the person, just their shadow. “Who is that?”

The shadow stills, and Ebb’s entire face flushes pink.

“Well, uh, um,” she stammers, bringing her free hand to the back of her head to rub at it while looking at everywhere that isn't me, “that’s, uh, well, she’s, ah—”

The shadow moves, and then a figure appears behind Ebb’s shoulder, draped in an oversized sweater that I don’t think is theirs and joggers that I _know_ are Ebb’s from the mud stains at the cuffs. “Hi,” the person says—although _person_ may not be the correct word if _person_ is a stand-in for _human_. I catch sight of their ears underneath their hair, and they are definitely pointed. Then the figure smiles, and their teeth are pointed as well. All of them. Just a bit. Their eyes are also _super_ green. Like grass on a bright day. “I’m Sunny.”

“Hi,” I say. “Er. Sunny.”

Ebb’s face is still very pink; Sunny seems to be getting a kick out of it. They (she? I think Ebb said _she_ , but I don’t want to assume) lean up and plant a kiss to Ebb’s cheek, and Ebb gets flustered all over again, muttering nothing words like I do whenever I get overwhelmed.

“I’m a friend of Ebb’s,” Sunny says. I think _friend_ probably isn’t the right word either.

Sunny looks back at Ebb and catches her eye before they say, “I think I should go. Yeah? We’ll talk later.” Then Sunny kisses Ebb’s temple and walks out the door past me. “Nice meeting you, Simon,” they call back over their shoulder.

“You too?” I reply, watching as they walk in a direction that might be to the Wood. Then I turn back to Ebb and ask, “Who was _that_?”

Ebb sighs and smiles like she’s trying to hold back a bigger one. “Come in, boy,” she says, urging me inside. “Let’s talk.”

**BAZ**

This blasted spell is broken.

You can only use **Don’t go where I can’t follow** to find somebody if you’re really close with the person missing. We might not have worked out whether we’re still enemies or not, but I am, for all intents and purposes, _close_ to Simon Snow. I know practically everything about him. I know that he whimpers in his sleep sometimes. I know that he’s worried about his grade in Magickal Theory and hasn’t told Bunce about it. I know that he’s destined to kill me someday and that he doesn’t take that responsibility seriously enough not to fake date me. You could give me a blank canvas, and I could paint every freckle and detail of his face from memory alone.

So I don’t understand why the spell sends me towards the Watford outer gates and then fizzles out until I’ve got my wand aimed towards the goatherd’s place.

I dropped the drawbridge for this. I used spells I’m not technically supposed to be using for this.

And now Simon’s apparently with the goatherd.

Or the finding spell I used is broken.

I try out a **Scooby-Dooby-Doo, where are you?** just to see if it yields different results; my wand starts trying to move in the goatherd’s direction while it’s still in my hand. So it’s not the spell. I guess Simon _was_ outside the gates. Probably did the same thing he did to get there that he did to get to Ebb's. ( _I need to get away_ isn't a spell. It shouldn't have done anything when he said it. I don't understand.)

I hope he’s okay. I hope he got his magic under control. The amount of his magic that I smelled before he disappeared—it was a lot. And it felt nervous, like he was freaking out about something. It felt like static in my mouth.

I cast **Don’t go where I can’t follow** again (because I like that the spell acknowledges how close I actually am with Simon—Bunce can fight with Tolkien if she wants to complain about it) and turn on my heel back towards the school.

“What happened?” Wellbelove asks when I run into her and Bunce on my way back. (Of course I ran ahead of them. I want to find Snow first and then steal him away before Bunce tries to talk to him again about whatever it was that made him teleport away.) “Penny’s ring is showing that we need to turn back now.”

“Your guess,” I say, easing past them, “is as good as mine.” Then I throw back over my shoulder, “I think he transported himself again!”

“Because _why_ would he make this easy,” Wellbelove grumbles, “when he can send us on a wild goose chase?”

I turn around so that I’m walking backwards towards the school and facing the duo at the same time. I'm a real multitasker. “You don’t have to come with! I promise I’ve got it handled.”

“Over my dead body, Pitch,” Bunce says, picking up the pace. I think she’s trying to pass me, but that’s not going to happen. I won’t let it; I start moving faster too, even though it’s harder to do since I’m already walking the wrong way around. “We were fighting about _you_ in the first place, so I don’t know why—”

_What?_

Bunce stops talking when she bumps into me because I’ve stopped moving. They were fighting about _me_?

I have to know why. I have to. I can barely get the words out: “What did he say?”

Bunce is determined to be bloody menace, so she just glares and makes to walk around me. I grab her hands with mine before she can get very far, though. (If anyone was watching us now, I think they'd assume we were about to start singing.)

“Please,” I whisper. The word scratches at my throat; thinking about Simon fighting about me makes me feel a little choked up. “Bunce. What did he say?”

Bunce’s glare continues for a few more seconds before she finally sighs and settles for staring at me in vague annoyance. “I suppose,” she says begrudgingly, “that Simon will tell you anyway. So there’s no use in me not telling you.”

“Please,” I say again. “I need to know.”

She stares at my face and doesn’t say anything. We stand like that for what feels like ages, and I feel like I’m going to burst open and die if she doesn’t talk soon. I have to know what she and Simon talked about before we find him. I need to know what I’m getting into, what I need to be ready to explain away.

When she finally speaks, I kind of feel like crying.

“He’s not sure who he likes,” she says, and then she glances between me and Wellbelove.

Oh.

Oh, _fuck_.

Wellbelove and I stare at each other for a few seconds in awkward silence before she lets out in one breath, “I thought you were dating.”

“We are,” I say back, deciding that I’ll abide by the _don’t tell Agatha_ rule. Technically, Agatha hasn't figured anything out. She's just asked a question. A question I can lie to her about, I think.

I know I should probably be upset or something—Bunce basically confirmed to Wellbelove that my relationship with Snow is not as real as we tried to make it seem, so it really is only a matter of time before she _does_ figure us out—but I can’t hold back the smile that bursts across my face. _I have a chance_. Simon Snow isn’t sure if he likes me or Wellbelove, and _this is the closest to a chance that I have ever been given_. Simon Snow argued with his best friend about liking me. This is the greatest day of my life.

“Then why is Simon confused?” Wellbelove looks like she wants to vomit. Her breathing is starting to pick up, and she’s gone paler than she was thirty seconds ago. I reach out a hand to steady her, but she shrugs me off. Bunce tries as well, but she shrugs out of her touch too.

“Wellbelove,” I try instead, “are you feeling okay?”

“No,” she gasps out. “Absolutely not.” Then, before either of us can respond, she stands up straighter and says, “I’m going to bed. I can’t deal with this right now. I’m sure you two can find Simon by yourselves.”

She takes off for the Cloisters at a sprint.

**AGATHA**

I don’t know what I want.

For Simon to like me. For Simon to _not_ like me.

I don’t _know_.

Baz clearly has a preference; he started beaming like a complete idiot when Penny said that Simon didn’t know which of us he liked. Which is a weird reaction to have if they’re already dating, but my reaction is weird too, isn’t it? I thought I wanted to date him. I thought I wanted Simon Snow to be my boyfriend. The thought of dating him, though…the thought of him deciding that he likes me instead of Baz…

It makes me want to run into the Wood and never come back.

But the thought of him not choosing me, of him deciding he doesn’t have any feelings for me, makes me feel just as bad.

I don’t have a bloody clue what I want from him.

**SIMON**

“Sunny is my partner,” Ebb tells me after she’s fixed us some tea. “I’ve been in love with her since my Watford days.”

“Oh,” I say, smiling and taking a sip from my cup. Ebb seems like she’s got a lot more to say about Sunny, so I just get myself comfortable in her chair and let her talk.

She tells me that Sunny is a dryad, which explains the ears and the teeth and the eyes. The only other dryad I’ve really talked to looked kind of like Sunny, but she carried a parasol with her and spoke like she was from an Arthurian legend or something. I’m glad that Sunny didn’t speak like that when she was here. “I never thought she’d like me back,” Ebb continues, sighing happily. “But she did!”

I’ve never really thought about Ebb being in love before. I’ve never even thought about Ebb _dating_ before, to be honest. She’s always just…here. Alone. Or, at least, I always _thought_ she was alone. I guess she could have been with Sunny for years and just never let us run into each other.

There’s something about Ebb having a girlfriend that makes my heart get a little fluttery.

And then I’m thinking about Baz again.

And wondering if Baz has ever had a boyfriend. A real one. Who takes him on dates and buys him gifts and gets to kiss him.

The thought of another guy being able to do all the things I suddenly really want to maybe do makes me feel like pure shit.

“Boyo,” Ebb says, reaching out and placing a hand on my shoulder, “what are you thinkin’ about that’s got you so riled up?” When I just stare at her in stunned (embarrassed) silence, her face softens, and she says, “Tell me what you wanted to tell me when you got here. I want to help.”

It’s Ebb. I know she’s not my mom or anything, but she’s always looked out for me, and she’s always had my best interest at heart. She’s listened every time I’ve come out here and ranted about Baz. She already knows that I’m obsessed with him. And she knows about the Agatha stuff too—she was the only person I told when I thought I had a crush on her.

Telling Ebb this doesn’t have to be a big deal if I don’t let it be one.

I imagine taking a running start and diving headfirst. Just letting the words fall out of me, once, surrounding me like a wave. Just one time. Hearing them out loud for _one_ second. All I have to do is talk _once_. We’ll deal with what the words mean later.

I take a deep breath.

Exhale.

“I don’t know if I like Baz or Agatha,” I say in a rush. As soon as I'm done, I clamp my lips shut and burrow further into the seat. My face is hot. I feel like I can’t say anything else, ever again, in my life. Like my vocal cords have locked themselves away in my throat, never to be heard from again, because of the embarrassment of forcing those words out. _I don’t know if I like Baz or Agatha_. How do I not know? How can someone not know? I feel like even more of an idiot than usual.

Penny knows she likes Micah. Why is it not easy like that for me?

I look at Ebb for a reaction, and her face looks almost like she understands. “Dearie,” she says softly, “that’s okay. Figuring out things like that takes time. Do you have anywhere you need to be right now?”

 _Talking to Penny. Talking to Baz. Talking to Agatha_.

I shake my head.

She smiles gently. “Then tell me as much as you want, and we’ll go from there.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen i really needed simon and ebb to talk about being gay in Carry On and that didn't happen. so it's starting to happen now. apparently. also my tumblr is urban-sith if anyone's interested in that. love y'all <3


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